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With  the  CompHments  of 

The  Theological  Seminary  of  the  Presbyterian 

Church  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Kindly  acknowledge  receipt  to 

Rev.  HAROLD  McA.  ROBINSON 

Princeton,  N.  J. 


BIBLICAL   AND   THEOLOGICAL 
STUDIES 


BIBLICAL  AND  THEOLOGICAL 

STUDIES 


BY 


THE   MEMBERS   OF  THE    FACULTY  OF 
PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


PUBLISHED  IN  COMMEMORATION 

OF  THE  ONE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY 

OF  THE  FOUNDING  OF  THE  SEMINARY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

MCMXII 


Copyright   by   the 

Trustees  of  the  Theological  Seminary 

of  the   Presbyterian  Church   at 

Princeton,  New  Jersey,  1912, 


/X-   /0(c(a0 


-^ 


THE  FIRST  SESSION  OF  PRINCETON  THEO- 
LOGICAL SEMINARY  COMMENCED  ON  THE 
TWELFTH  DAY  OF  AUGUST  l8l2.  ON  THE 
SEVENTH  DAY  OF  MAY  1 912,  ITS  ONE-HUN- 
DREDTH   SESSION    CLOSES. 

THIS  VOLUME  OF  ESSAYS  HAS  BEEN  PRE- 
PARED BY  THE  MEMBERS  OF  THE  FACULTY 
OF  THE  SEMINARY  IN  COMMEMORATION  OF 
THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  SEMINARY'S 
FIRST  CENTURY  OF  SERVICE  TO  THE  CHURCH. 


250263 


CONTENTS 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA i 

Francis  Landey  Patton 

ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 35 

Benjamin  Breckinridge  Warfield 

THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL. 91 

John  D.  Davis 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS;  A  STUDY 109 

John  De  Witt 

THE  SUPERNATURAL 137 

William  Brenton  Greene,  Jr. 

THE  ESCHATOLOGICAL  ASPECT  OF  THE  PAULINE  CON- 
CEPTION OF  THE  SPIRIT 209 

Geerhardus  Vos 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 261 

Robert  Dick  Wilson 

THE  PLACE  OF  THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES  OF 

JESUS    : 307 

William  Park  Armstrong 

MODERN  SPIRITUAL  MOVEMENTS 357 

Charles  Rosenbury  Erdman 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 393 

Frederick  William  Loetscher 

SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  BIBLICAL  NARRATIVES  RE- 
HEARSED IN  THE  KORAN 423 

James  Oscar  Boyd 

THE  FINALITY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION 447 

,   Caspar  Wistar  Hodge,  Jr. 

THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  OF  HERMAS.  492 
Kerr  Duncan  Macmillan 

JESUS  AND  PAUL 545 

John  Gresham  Machen 

THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH,  GOD  OF  ISRAEL 579 

Oswald  Thompson  Allis 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 
Francis  Landey  Patton 


The  practical  aim  of  the  Theological  Seminary  does  not  justify  disparage- 
ment of  thorough  theological  education.  Outline  of  the  history  of 
theological  encyclopaedia.  Sources  of  Theology :  Reason,  Scrip- 
ture, the  Church. 

Thesis:  i.  Rational  Theology:  Science  of  Religion,  Philosophy  of  Re- 
ligion. 

2.  Scriptural   Theology:  the  Higher  Criticism,  the  Lower   Criti- 
cism, Exegesis,  Biblical  Theology. 

3.  Ecclesiastical  Theology:  History  of  the  Church,  Organization 
of  the  Church,  Work  and  Worship  of  the  Church. 

Antithesis:  The  content  of  Christian  Theology  is  antithetically  related 
to  the  opposing  views  of  those  within  and  those  without  the 
pale  of  Christian  faith.  Hence  the  place  in  Theological  Ency- 
clopaedia for  Polemic  Theology  and  Apologetic  Theology. 

Synthesis:  Systematic  Theology  is  the  synthesis  of  all  the  foregoing 
theological   disciplines:     Christian    Ethics,    Dogmatics. 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

A  Theological  Seminary  is,  first  of  all,  a  school  for  the 
training  of  men  to  preach  the  Gospel.  The  claims  of  theologi- 
cal learning  should  never  supersede  or  relegate  to  a  subordi- 
nate position  the  practical  aims  which  were  contemplated  by 
those  who  founded  this  Seminary;  and  if  we  magnify  these 
claims,  it  is  only  because  we  believe  that  the  minister  who 
would  most  effectively  discharge  the  duties  of  his  high  calling 
is  he  who,  other  things  being  equal,  is  best  equipped  in  his 
knowledge  of  the  Disciplines  that  enter  into  the  theological 
curriculum.  It  is  not  necessary  now  to  call  attention  to  those 
elementary  studies  which  underlie  a  minister's  theological  ed- 
ucation. For  we  have  made  a  complete  separation  between  the 
disciplinary  studies  which  enter  into  what  is  called  a  liberal 
education,  and  the  more  distinctively  technical  and  specialized 
studies  which  constitute  the  curriculum  of  the  professional 
school.  Every  student  of  the  theological  seminary  is  supposed 
to  have  graduated  in  Arts,  or  to  have  had  an  education  equiva- 
lent to  that  required  for  the  Bachelor  of  Arts  degree.  With 
that  maturity  of  mind  which  such  an  education  betokens,  and 
with  that  seriousness  of  purpose  which  may  be  fairly  presup- 
posed on  the  part  of  men  who  have  all  attained  their  majority, 
and  who  besides  are  looking  forward  to  a  professional  career 
in  the  sacred  calling  of  the  ministry,  as  conditions  precedent 
of  the  successful  prosecution  of  theological  study,  it  should 
not  be  difficult  for  us  to  secure  from  those  who  enter  the  Semi- 
nary an  intelligent  interest  in  the  problem  of  the  theological 
curriculum,  and  a  hearty  cooperation  with  us  in  carrying  it  out 
in  the  details  of  class-room  instruction. 

I  venture  to  hope,  therefore,  that  however  dry  and  un- 
interesting much  that  I  have  to  say  may  be  to  many,  I 
may   have   the   interested   attention   of   my   brethren   in   the 


4  THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

ministry  and  of  theological  students.  The  practical  value 
of  much  that  is  taught  in  a  theological  seminary  is  some- 
times challenged,  I  doubt  not,  even  by  very  good  students; 
and  their  skepticism  on  this  head  arises  generally  out  of 
the  fact,  so  I  at  least  believe,  that  they  do  not  see  the  re- 
lations which  the  several  parts  of  theological  instruction  sus- 
tain to  each  other.  Have  these  various  additions  to  the  cur- 
riculum been  accidental  accretions,  or  do  they  maintain  an 
organic  relation  to  each  other?  Are  chairs  of  theology  to 
be  multiplied  indefinitely  in  obedience  to  the  varying  de- 
mands of  the  times,  or  as  increased  endowments  make  it 
possible  for  us  to  increase  the  professorial  staff,  or  is  there 
a  logical  limit  to  this  sort  of  expansion;  which  can  be  in- 
dicated and  rationally  defended?  It  may  seem  to  some  that 
what  I  say  may  serve,  in  a  measure  at  least,  as  an  answer 
to  these  questions.  My  theme  embraces  the  entire  circle 
of  theological  learning.  But  I  have  not  set  myself  so  am- 
bitious a  task  as  these  words  may  lead  you  to  suppose;  for  I 
desire  only  to  ask  your  attention  to  some  thoughts  of  mine  on 
what  is  technically  known  as  Theological  Encyclopaedia. 

This  word  "  encyclopaedia  "  was  probably  first  used  by  Galen. 
As  denoting  the  circle  of  the  sciences  it  was  used  by  Martinius, 
1606.  In  the  popular  sense  familiar  to  us  all  it  was  used  by 
Alsted,  1620,  and  as  indicating  the  totality  of  materials  ger- 
mane to  a  special  science  it  was  used  in  the  eighteenth  century 
by  several  writers,  and  applied  to  Jurisprudence  by  Putter,  to 
Medicine  by  Boerhaave,  and  to  Theology  by  Mursinna. 

Theological  Encyclopaedia  undertakes  to  classify  and  reduce 
to  system  the  different  Disciplines  or  departments  of  theologi- 
cal science.  It  seeks  to  show  the  organic  relations  between 
these  Disciplines,  and  it  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  lay  down 
the  methods  that  should  be  followed,  and  to  state  and  compare 
the  methods  that  have  been  followed  in  the  different  Disci- 
plines. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  trace  the  history  of  Theological 
Encyclopaedia  from  its  crude  beginnings  in  Chrysostom's  six 
books  De  Sacerdotio  in  the  fourth  century,  in  the  advice  of 
Cassiodorus  to  the  monks  of  Vivarium  in  the  sixth  century. 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  5 

and  later  in  the  Institutio  cleric orum  of  Rabanus  Maurus  and 
the  Didascalia  of  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  down  to  the  days  of 
Scholasticism  when,  by  the  union  of  theology  and  philosophy, 
as  Rabiger  says,  theology  became  a  learned  Discipline  with 
the  primacy,  we  may  add,  vested  in  philosophy.  Such  a  his- 
toiy  would  tell  the  story  of  the  subsequent  protest  against 
over-intellectualism  in  theology  made  by  Roger  Bacon  and 
then  by  Erasmus,  the  modifying  influence  of  Pietism  after  the 
Reformation  as  represented  in  such  a  work  as  the  Isagoge 
of  Buddaeus,  and  then  the  waning  interest  in  theological  study 
which  led  men  like  Bertholdt,  Planck,  Thym  and  Tittmann 
(1796,  1798,  1813)  to  write  their  Theological  Encyclopaedias 
as  manuals  for  those  entering  upon  the  study  of  theology  and 
for  the  purpose  of  awakening  a  new  interest  in  it.  There  is 
nothing  in  these  systems  of  encyclopaedia  that  need  claim  our 
attention,  and  I  venture  to  say  that  none  of  us  would  think  of 
adopting  the  divisions  of  theological  science  set  forth  in  these 
manuals.  The  next  writer  worthy  of  notice  is  the  Reformed 
theologian  of  Holland,  Clarisse,  who  divides  theology  ac- 
cording to  the  familiar  and  simple  plan  into  four  parts — exe- 
getica,  historica,  systematica  and  pastoralis.  This  also  is  the 
division  adopted  by  Hagenbach,  one  of  the  later  encyclopae- 
dists, and  is  the  one  most  generally  accepted  among  theologians 
to-day. 

But  in  Schleiermacher  we  have  an  illustration  of  the  way  in 
which  one's  fundamental  conception  of  theology  will  inevitably 
determine  his  distribution  of  theological  material.  All  the- 
ology is  divided,  according  to  him,  into  three  parts — Philo- 
sophical, Historical  and  Practical.  Under  the  head  of  Histori- 
cal Theology  he  includes  Dogmatics  and  Exegetics.  From 
the  point  of  view  which  makes  the  Bible  the  rule  of  faith,  it  is, 
of  course,  an  error  to  put  Dogmatic  Theology  under  the  his- 
torical rubric.  But  from  Schleiermacher's  point  of  view  it  was 
most  natural  to  do  it.  For  we  have  only  to  conceive  of  the 
Church  as  an  organism  possessed  of  a  corporate  life  and  un- 
divided corporate  consciousness,  and  it  will  at  once  appear 
that  in  the  Bible  you  have  the  record  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness of  the  Church  for  a  certain  period,  and  that  in 


6  THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

Church  History  you  have  the  record  of  the  rehgious  Hfe  of  the 
Christian  society  through  the  subsequent  centuries.  Now  part 
of  that  religious  life  or  thought  takes  the  form  of  dogma. 
Dogmatic  Theology,  therefore,  is  not  the  systematic  exhibition 
of  the  truths  of  Scripture,  but  is  rather  a  crystallization  of  the 
religious  consciousness  in  the  form  of  religious  belief,  and  may 
vary  in  different  periods.  Dogmatic  Theology  is  thus  a  part  of 
history.  The  affinity  of  this  view  promulgated  by  Schleier- 
macher  with  that  of  the  later  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  of  de- 
velopment, and  also  the  more  recent  Protestant  doctrine  of  the 
Christian  consciousness,  is  apparent.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see, 
moreover,  how  Schleiermacher  has  furnished  the  philosophy 
which  enables  Roman  Catholic  theologians  to  give  a  systemat- 
ic and  philosophic  explication  of  their  dogmatic  system;  and 
it  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find  that  in  the  hands  of 
Dobmeyer  and  Staudenmaier  Schleiemiacher's  principle  be- 
comes the  basis  of  a  Roman  Catholic  encyclopaedia. 

The  serious  objection  to  Schleiemiacher's  encyclopsedia  is 
that  it  proceeds  upon  a  basis  that  antagonizes  the  Protestant 
principle  that  the  Bible  is  the  rule  of  faith  and  practice.  Other 
objections  may  be  urged  against  the  mode  of  distributing  the 
theological  Disciplines  in  the  encyclopaedias  of  Dantz,  Pelt, 
Lange,  Tholuck,   Hagenbach  and  Kuyper. 

Take  Hagenbach's  for  example.  The  four  parts  of  theol- 
ogy according  to  him,  are  Historical,  Exegetical,  Systematic 
and  Practical.  But  what  is  Historical  Theology?  And  if  the 
development  of  doctrine  in  the  post-Biblical  period  is  put  down 
under  Historical  Theology,  why  is  the  development  of  doc- 
trine within  the  Biblical  period  cut  off  from  the  domain  of 
Historical  Theology  and  erected  into  a  separate  department 
called  Exegetical  Theology?  And  why  is  Practical  Theolo- 
gy not  logically  a  part  of  Christian  Ethics,  except  that  the 
practical  duties  enjoined  in  it  pertain  not  so  much  to  the  pri- 
vate Christian  as  to  the  Church  in  its  organic  life,  or  to  the 
individual  in  his  official  relations  to  the  Church?  These  are 
only  illustrations  of  the  difficulties  we  meet  in  attempting  a 
logical  distribution  of  the  Theological  Disciplines.  Apolo- 
getics again — to  take  another  illustration — is  a  subject  that 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  7 

the  encyclopaedists  have  difficulty  with;  some  treating  it  as 
belonging  to  the  Prolegomena  of  Theology,  and  others  as 
part  of  Systematic  Theology.  But  it  is  much  easier  to  see 
defects  than  to  remedy  them,  and  it  is  quite  likely  that  the 
scheme  which  I  propose  will  reveal  weaknesses  to  the  eyes 
of  others  which  I  do  not  see. 

In  organizing  the  Theological  Disciplines  I  proceed  upon 
this  postulate:  that  man  knows  God  through  his  reason,  that 
God  has  superadded  to  the  light  of  nature  the  Revelation  of 
himself  in  the  Bible,  and  that  this  enlarged  and  corrected 
knowledge  is  embodied  in  the  Church. 

The  materials  for  all  our  theological  knowledge  are  to  be 
found,  therefore,  in  these  three  sources :  the  Reason,  the  Bible, 
the  Church.  We  shall  accordingly  have  Rational  Theology, 
Scriptural  Theology  and  Ecclesiastical  Theology.  Assuming 
now  that  our  point  of  view  is  that  of  the  Reformed  Theology, 
it  is  obvious  that  the  body  of  belief  involved  in  these  Disci- 
plines just  mentioned  stands  antithetically  related  to  opposing 
views,  and  that  it  will  be  necessary  to  carry  on  a  systematic 
defense  of  that  theology,  first,  against  those  who  assail  our 
Reformed  position  from  within  the  Church,  and,  secondly, 
against  those  who  assail  Christianity  from  without.  Ac- 
cordingly we  shall  have  Polemic  Theology  and  Apologetic 
Theology. 

And  yet  again  the  need  will  be  felt  of  gathering  into  one 
compact  system  the  results  of  all  these  Disciplines  in  a  body  of 
divinity  which  will  represent  the  sum  total  of  theological  in- 
quiry. This  will  be  Systematic  Theology.  I  do  not  claim 
any  minute  acquaintance  with  the  Hegelian  philosophy,  and  I 
do  not  profess  any  great  regard  for  it;  but  it  is  evident  that 
in  the  scheme  which  I  propose  the  dominant  words  are  those 
which  have  such  large  place  in  Hegelian  literature — Thesis, 
Antithesis  and  Synthesis. 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 


Thesis. 

Man  derives  some  knowledge  of  God  through  his  reason. 
This  I  know  is  disputed,  and  the  Ritschlians  are  particularly 
fond  of  disparaging  Natural  Theology.  But  apart  from  the 
question  of  the  possibility  of  a  Natural  Theology,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  the  religious  phenomena  of  the  world  call  for  con- 
sideration. We  cannot  very  well  avoid,  therefore,  giving  a 
place  in  our  Theological  Encyclopaedia  to  Rational  or  Philo- 
sophical Theology. 

I.  Rational  Theology. — Under  this  head  I  should  include 
the  Science  of  Religion  and  the  Philosophy  of  Religion. 

It  is  a  matter  of  very  considerable  importance  to  study  the 
various  religions  of  the  world  and  to  systematize  the  knowl- 
edge thus  obtained  in  regard  to  the  beliefs  men  have  actually 
entertained  regarding  God.  I  hardly  think  it  necessary  to  go, 
as  Ebrard  does,  into  the  history  of  religions  simply  for  the 
little  apologetic  material  to  be  derived  from  it,  and  I  would 
not  make  comparative  religion  therefore  a  branch  of  Apolo- 
getics. We  shall  learn  many  things  from  the  Science  of  Re- 
ligion: we  shall  learn  the  solidarity  of  religious  life  through- 
out the  world,  and  that  will  quicken  our  sympathies  with  others 
of  our  kind;  we  shall  be  made  cognizant  of  the  common  ele- 
ments held  in  solution  by  all  religions,  and  shall  know  the 
deep  foundation  already  laid  on  which  the  superstructure  of 
the  Gospel  can  be  built ;  we  shall  see  the  insufficiency  of  heath- 
en religions,  and  in  the  contrast  between  them  and  Christianity 
find  an  argument  for  the  exclusive  character  of  Christianity; 
and  we  shall  be  able  to  account  for  the  analogies  between 
Christianity  and  other  religions  without  resorting  to  the  hy- 
pothesis that  our  religion  has  been  a  wholesale  plagiarism 
from  the  start.  Still  our  object  should  be  to  find  out  what  men 
have  actually  believed  regarding  God  as  the  result  of  the  light 
of  nature.  Our  inquiries  under  this  broad  statement  of  aim 
may  be  made  as  detailed  and  independent  as  we  choose,  and 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  9 

should  not  be  conditioned  by  the  practical  use  in  Missions  or 
Apologetics  which  we  may  wish  to  make  of  our  results. 

Then,  again,  we  have  the  old  subject  of  Natural  Theology, 
and  more  pai-ticularly  of  Theism,  which,  of  course,  belongs  to 
the  department  of  Philosophical  Theology.  With  those  who 
in  our  day  would  make  our  theology  more  distinctively  Chris- 
tian by  making  it  appear  that  our  only  knowledge  of  God 
comes  to  us  through  Christ,  I  have  no  sympathy.  For  it  seems 
to  me  that  Christ  can  teach  Theism  to  an  Atheist  to-day  only 
by  an  inferential  passage  from  the  phenomena  of  his  earthly 
life  to  belief  in  the  Divine  existence.  But  if  the  phenomena 
of  the  universe  are  powerless  to  produce  this  result,  it  is  vain 
to  suppose  that  the  phenomena  of  a  single  human  life  can 
produce  it.  It  is  a  disservice  to  revealed  religion  to  disparage 
Natural  Theology  in  the  hope  of  thereby  exalting  Christ. 
Natural  Theology  is  the  basis  of  Revealed  Theology,  and  the 
true  order  of  thought  is  found  in  the  Saviour's  words :  "  Ye 
believe  in  God :  believe  also  in  me."  But  be  the  didactic  scope 
of  Natural  Theology  more  or  less,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  phe- 
nomena of  religious  experience  are  receiving  a  great  deal  of 
attention  at  the  hands  of  philosophers,  and  Christian  theolog- 
ians cannot  afford  to  ignore  the  work  of  the  psychologists 
and  metaphysicians  in  this  field.  We  are  having  our  religious 
life  interpreted  for  us  in  the  terms  of  empirical  psychology. 
We  are  having  our  Christian  doctrine  explained  according  to 
the  Hegelian  metaphysics.  Religion  is  being  looked  upon  as 
a  pathological  condition,  or  as  a  mystical  emotionalism 
that  needs  nothing  for  its  content  beyond  a  spirit  of  submis- 
sion to  the  inevitable. 

How  the  profound  problems  of  metaphysics  bear  upon  the 
philosophy  of  religion  we  can  see  in  the  Gifford  lectures  of 
Ward  and  Royce.  How  the  distinctive  features  of  Christian- 
ity disappear  under  the  touch  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic  we 
can  see  in  the  writings  of  the  Cairds.  We  may  be  thankful, 
perhaps,  that  something  of  supematuralism  is  saved  from  the 
wreck  when  we  read  the  brilliant  pages  of  James's  Varieties 
of  Religions  Experience ;  but  then  how  little  it  is !  And  when 
in  despair  of  a  rational  basis  for  religious  belief  we  are  left  by 


lO  THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

Hoffding  and  Mallock  to  console  ourselves  with  value-judg- 
ments, we  are  tempted  to  ask:  Has  it  come  to  this?  And 
does  our  philosophy  of  religion  say  for  its  last  word  that  we 
keep  our  religious  beliefs  simply  because  we  cannot  and  will 
not  give  them  up?  The  Christian  theologian  must  come  into 
this  field  as  a  defender  of  the  faith.  He  must  strengthen  the 
outposts  if  he  would  save  the  citadel. 

But  I  go  farther  than  this.  I  belj.eve  that  there  is  need 
just  now  of  a  philosophy  of  the  Christian  religion  which  will 
work  on  the  basis  of  contemporary  philosophy  and  the  apolo- 
getic minimum,  and  give  us  such  a  synthesis  of  natural 
and  revealed  religion  as  shall  satisfy  the  intellectual  needs  of 
those  who  turn  away  from  the  pages  of  Starbuck  and  Caird, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  who  are  not  ready  to  accept  a  complete 
Systematic  Theology,  on  the  other,  but  are  nevertheless  crav- 
ing for  a  rationale  of  Christianity. 

2.  Scriptural  Theology. — This  department,  commonly 
called  Exegetical  Theology,  includes  all  those  studies  which 
terminate  directly  upon  the  Bible,  Among  these  we  have  the 
studies  ancillary  to  the  study  of  the  Scriptures,  such  as 
Archaeology,  Biblical  Geography  and,  of  course,  the  original 
languages  of  the  Scripture.  The  encyclopaedists  have  a  dis- 
heartening way  of  writing  on  this  subject,  for  they  not  only 
tell  us  to  read  Greek  and  Hebrew,  but  they  would  have  us  un- 
derstand that  in  order  to  know  Hebrew  one  must  know  the 
cognate  languages,  and  we  begin  to  think  of  the  Aramaic, 
Syriac,  Arabic  and  Assyrian.  Hagenbach's  Encyclopsedia  is 
pretty  dry  reading,  but  our  heart  warms  toward  it  when,  after 
reading  dreary  pages  of  what  the  author  calls  Exegetische 
Hiilfswissenschaften,  he  condescendingly  tells  us  that  a  com- 
prehensive knowledge  of  all  the  Semitic  languages  cannot  be 
demanded  of  every  Christian  theologian.  And  it  was  very 
kind  in  him  to  put  in  a  footnote  the  following  from  Luther, 
which  we  lay  aside  for  our  comfort  along  with  other  choice 
bits  of  cheap  erudition :  "  One  is  not  a  truly  wise  Christian 
quia  Grcecus  sit  et  Hebrceus, — ^because  he  is  a  Greek  or  He- 
brew scholar — quando  beatus  Hieronymtis  quinque  Unguis 
monoglosson  Augustinum  non  adoequavit, — since  Jerome  of 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  II 

"blessed  memory,  with  all  his  learning,  could  not  come  within 
gunshot  of  the  monoglot  Augustine."  It  is  wonderful  indeed 
what  an  amount  of  good  thinking  one  may  do  in  one  lan- 
guage! 

But  beside  these  ancillary  studies  there  is  the  vexed  ques- 
tion of  the  Canon,  which  may  be  regarded  perhaps  as  belong- 
ing to  the  Prolegomena  of  Scriptural  Study.  Coming,  then, 
more  closely  to  the  study  of  the  Bible  we  have — 

(i)  The  Higher  Criticism.  Were  there  no  questions  re- 
garding the  date  and  authorship  of  the  books  of  the  Bible 
which  affect  historical  results,  most  of  the  material  of  this 
department  might  be  handed  over  to  the  department  of  his- 
tory; or  if  results  were  considered  without  placing  the  empha- 
sis upon  the  critical  investigations  which  precede  them,  the 
subject  might  still  be  considered  as  historical.  But  it  is  usual 
to  rubricise  this  department  under  the  head  of  criticism;  and 
however  rubricised  there  is  no  escape  from  the  necessity 
of  entering  upon  the  work  of  the  Higher  Criticism.  A 
Church  may  say  that  for  a  minister  to  reach  certain  conclu- 
sions in  his  critical  exegesis  is  to  put  in  jeopardy  his  ministerial 
standing;  but  a  Church  which  should  forbid  inquiry  would 
stultify  herself.  This  business  of  the  Higher  Criticism  on 
its  ecclesiastical  side  does  not  seem  to  be  so  difficult  after  all. 
We  do  not  believe  in  an  infallible  Church ;  and  we  cannot  very 
well  assume  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible  in  order  to  prove 
its  infallibility.  We  are  therefore,  in  a  sense  in  the 
hands  of  the  specialists.  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be  helped. 
If  our  attorney  is  not  managing  our  case  right,  my  advice  is 
to  dismiss  him  and  get  another.  But  the  advice  of  many 
seems  to  be:  let  the  case  go  by  default:  the  attorneys  are  a 
bad  lot. 

Then  we  have  (2)  the  Lower  Criticism,  or  that  which  is 
concerned  with  the  task  of  securing  a  correct  text.  The 
theological  student  needs  no  explanation  of  the  meaning  of 
this  Discipline,  but  if  the  intelligent  layman  wishes  to  know 
what  is  involved  in  inquiries  under  this  head,  let  him  read  the 
admirable  treatise  on  the  Textual  Criticism  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment by  my  friend  and  colleague,  Dr.  Warfield.     Suffice  it  to 


12  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

say  that  this  is  the  sphere  pf  the  labors  of  such  men  as 
Tregelles  and  Tischendorf  and  Drs.  Westcott  and  Hort. 

Then  we  have  (3)  Exegesis:  Interpretation.  And  it  is  here 
that  Calvin  and  Hodge  and  Addison  Alexander  and  Eadie 
and  Alford  and  Ellicott  and  Light  foot  and  Meyer  have  made 
the  world  of  Christian  students  their  debtors.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  this  department  of  theology  is  receiving  less 
attention  than  it  once  did,  for  it  is  the  minister  who  feeds 
his  mind  and  heart  by  close  contact  with  the  mind  of  God 
as  revealed  in  the  very  words  of  Scripture  whose  ministry 
will  be  rich  in  spiritual  power.  Time  was  when  the  intellect- 
ual life  of  scholarly  ministers  centred  in  exegetical  studies. 
Time  was  when  every  religious  controversy  was  fought  out 
on  exegetical  grounds.  But  ministers  have  shared  in  the 
intellectual  unrest  of  the  day.  Doubt  in  regard  to  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Scriptures  and  the  convergence  of  literary  criticism 
and  the  evolutionary  philosophy  upon  the  sacred  books  has 
tended  to  paralyze  all  theological  effort  or  has  transferred  it 
to  another  locus. 

And  finally  we  have  (4)  Biblical  Theology.  I  sympathize 
with  Rabiger  in  the  regret  that  this  designation  has  been  given 
to  this  department.  It  would  have  been  better  if  the  term 
could  have  been  kept  to  indicate  (and  Pelt  so  uses  it  in  his 
Encyclopaedia)  all  the  studies  that  terminate  on  the  Bible. 
My  friend  and  colleague,  Dr.  Vos,  following  Nosgen,  makes 
the  happy  suggestion  that  this  department  be  called  the  His- 
tory of  Revelation.  But  the  term  has  a  pretty  fixed  meaning 
and  is  generally  well  understood,  though  now  and  then  we 
find  a  man  who  still  gives  vent  to  his  dislike  of  Dogmatic 
Theology  by  professing  great  devotion  to  Biblical  Theology, 
as  though  the  latter  were  a  protest  against  the  former,  and 
were  a  little  more  loyal  to  the  authority  of  the  Bible.  It  is 
true  that  Biblical  Theology  takes  little  or  no  account  of  eccle- 
siastical controversies  and  is  silent  about  the  decisions  of 
Councils.  Still  it  must  be  remembered  that  Biblical  Theology 
does  not  consist  in  grouping  the  teaching  of  the  Scriptures 
under  certain  loci  communes,  such  as  sin  and  redemption. 
That  would  be  a  Biblical  Dogmatic.    The  Biblical  Theologian 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  13 

seeks  to  trace  the  development  of  doctrine  as  revealed  truth. 
His  subject  is  the  crowning  Discipline  of  Exegesis,  but  it  is 
an  historical  Discipline  too.  It  is  the  task  of  the  Dogmatic 
Theologian  to  exhibit  the  logical  unfolding  of  the  Covenant 
of  Grace,  but  it  is  the  task  of  the  Biblical  Theologian  to  ex- 
hibit its  chronological  unfolding. 

In  that  fine  fragment  on  the  History  of  Redemption,  by  the 
great  theologian  in  connection  with  whose  bicentenary  cel- 
ebrated a  few  years  ago  in  this  Seminary,  there  was  deliv- 
ered an  address  by  Dr.  DeWitt  which  the  readers  of  this 
volume  will  have  the  pleasure  of  reading,  we  have  the  true 
conception  of  this  department;  and  I  think  I  do  not  err  in 
saying  that,  at  least  so  far  as  we  in  America  are  concerned, 
Jonathan  Edwards  is  the  father  of  Biblical  Theology.  I 
do  not  think  that  Biblical  Theology  can  ever  supersede  Sys- 
tematic Theology,  but  it  is  a  most  important  part  of  theo- 
logical learning;  and  besides  serving  to  systematize  our  ex- 
egetical  studies,  it  will  render  great  service  to  us  in  the  con- 
struction of  Systematic  Theology.  We  shall  gain  an  in- 
sight into  the  genetic  relations  of  the  great  concepts  of 
Redemption  as  we  watch  their  gradual  unfolding.  We  shall 
acquire  an  historical  habit  in  the  study  of  Scripture.  Texts 
whose  doctrinal  significance  we  have  overlooked  will  be  seen  in 
a  new  light;  and  proof-texts  that  have  been  quoted  by  gen- 
erations of  dogmaticians  in  support  of  doctrines  which  they 
do  not  prove  will,  so  far  as  the  purposes  of  Dogmatic  Theolo- 
gy are  concerned,  be  sent  into  honorable  retirement. 

3.  Ecclesiastical  Theology. — Under  this  head  we  are  to 
group  all  those  studies  that  are  involved  in  our  conception  of 
the  Church.     And  of  course  there  is — 

(i)  The  History  of  the  Church,  which  may  be  considered 
as  general  and  special.  Now  the  historian's  method  will  be 
determined  largely  by  his  conception  of  the  Church.  If  organ- 
ization is  of  the  essence  of  the  Church,  the  liberal-minded 
historian  will  be  embarrassed  by  the  varieties  of  ecclesiastical 
organization.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  organization  is  not  of 
the  essence  of  the  Church  (which  is,  I  think,  the  better  view), 
he  is  relieved  at  once  of  a  very  serious  difficulty.    The  Roman 


14  THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

Catholic  historian  has  his  own  way  of  disposing  of  Presbyter- 
ians, and  the  Presbyterian  historian  has  his  way  (I  think  a 
better  way)  of  disposing  of  Roman  Catholics.  He  treats 
them  as  constituent  members  of  the  Church — meaning  by  it 
that  great  body  of  men  throughout  the  world  who  profess  the 
true  religion.  With  the  problem  of  coexistence  in  space  satis- 
factorily disposed  of,  the  historian  has  on  his  hands  the  less 
important,  but  still  important  problem  of  succession  in  time. 
We  have  been  told  so  much  of  late  that  history  is  not  a 
matter  of  dates  that  I  am  afraid  that  some  people  are  losing 
all  sense  of  historical  perspective.  I  should  think  a  good 
deal,  it  seems  to  me,  if  I  were  writing  Church  history,  on 
how  I  should  periodize.  Ideally  speaking,  one  would  think 
that  the  divisions  of  history  should  be  those  of  time;  that 
epochs  should  be  indicated  by  events  marking  the  terminus  a 
quo  and  the  terminus  ad  quem;  and  that  all  minor  divisions 
should  be  absorbed  in  the  even  and  uninterrupted  flow  of 
narrative.  This  is  Gibbon's  plan,  and  Milman's.  But  it  would 
not  have  suited  a  work  like  Neander's.  The  detailed  treatment 
he  was  to  give  his  subject  under  each  category  required  him 
to  make  his  categories  clear,  distinct  and  comprehensive.  And 
so  under  each  of  his  periods  he  deals  with  the  Church  in  the 
history  of  her  spread  abroad,  of  her  life  and  discipline,  and 
of  her  doctrine.  If,  as  we  cannot  very  well  avoid,  we  keep 
the  familiar  rubrics  of  ancient,  mediaeval  and  modern  history, 
we  should  naturally  expect  that  temporal  divisions  after  that 
would  be  subdivisions  of  these  three,  and  should  feel  it  would 
not  be  exactly  logical  to  absorb  them  in  another  scheme 
which  gives  nine  periods  of  history  coordinate  with  one  an- 
other. Yet  this  is  what  Dr.  Schaff  does  in  his  most  learned 
history  of  the  Church. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  deal  with  or  even  to  mention  here 
all  the  subjects  of  special  Church  history  that  may  properly 
fall  under  the  curriculum  of  theological  study;  but  I  must 
mention  two.  Symbolics  and  the  History  of  Doctrine. 
It  may  strike  some  as  an  anachronism  for  me  to  attach 
any  importance  to  the  study  of  Creeds  and  Confessions,  and 
yet  I  think  that  they  ought  to  be  considered  as  to  their  origin. 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  15 

the  men  who  made  them,  the  circumstances  which  gave  rise 
to  them,  and  the  controversies  that  called  for  their  prepara- 
tion. We  should  know  our  own  Confession  of  Faith  in  its 
relation  to  the  great  family  of  Reformed  Confessions,  of 
which  it  is  the  last  and  the  best;  we  should  see  how  the 
Reformed  Confessions  differ  from  the  Lutheran — the  Augs- 
burg and  the  Formula  of  Concord;  we  should  know  the  be- 
ginnings of  Arminianism,  and  be  ready  to  say  whether  we 
divide  the  Protestant  world  into  three  great  families,  Luth- 
eran, Arminian  and  Reformed,  or  whether  we  make  Armin- 
ians  and  Calvinists  two  species  under  the  genus  Reformed. 
We  should  have  clearly  in  our  minds  the  points  that  separate 
all  Protestant  confessions  from  the  Greek  and  Roman 
Churches ;  and  we  should  know — by  no  means  an  unimportant 
thing  to  knoW' — how  much  our  Protestantism  holds  in  com- 
mon with  the  Greek  Catholic  and  the  Roman  Catholic  com- 
munions. Turning  now  to  the  History  of  Doctrine,  two  meth- 
ods are  open  to  us.  We  may  divide  the  history  into  short 
periods,  and  treat  all  the  doctrines  under  every  period;  or  we 
may  divide  by  making  doctrine  the  basis  and  tracing  each 
doctrine  through  the  centuries.  Think  now  of  Baur's  great 
work  on  the  history  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  Miiller  on 
Sin,  Dorner  on  the  Person  of  Christ,  Ritschl  on  Justification — 
marvels  of  learning,  every  one ;  then  look  through  the  histories 
of  Doctrine,  such  as  Shedd's  and  Hagenbach's  and  Harnack's, 
and  imagine  the  literature  that  is  to  be  studied  before  one  is 
master  of  this  field.  Consider  what  it  means  to  study  the 
history  of  doctrine.  It  means  not  only  that  we  watch  the 
changes  from  the  indefinite  to  the  definite  that  a  doctrine  has 
undergone,  not  only  that  we  know  what  the  great  Doctors 
and  Fathers  have  said  regarding  it;  but  that  we  understand, 
too,  the  influences  that  led  to  these  opinions,  and  particularly 
the  coloring  of  current  philosophy,  whether  it  be  Platonic  or 
Aristotelian ;  whether  it  be  Manichean  or  Scholastic,  whether  it 
be  Kantian  or  Hegelian.  And  think  of  the  work  that  this  in- 
volves !  If  I  were  having  an  historian  of  dogma  made  to  order 
I  would  require  him  to  have  great  acquisitive  powers,  and  I 
would  have  him  at  home  in  the  languages  of  the  Bible.    I  would 


l6  THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

have  him  secure  a  mastery  of  Church  History  in  general.  I 
would  make  him  as  thorough  in  his  mastery  of  the  history 
of  Philosophy.  I  would  have  him  become  a  systematic  dog- 
matician  of  the  highest  logical  powers;  and  when  I  had  done 
all,  I  would  put  him  early  at  the  task  of  studying  the  history 
of  doctrine.  Then  we  might  get  what  at  present  we  do  not 
have — a  satisfactory  treatment  of  the  subject. 

The  second  topic  under  the  head  of  Ecclesiastical  Theology 
is  (2)  the  Organization  of  the  Church.  There  are  wide  dif- 
ferences of  opinion  in  regard  to  the  way  in  which  the  Church 
should  be  organized,  officered  and  governed.  The  theologian 
who  wishes  to  discuss  the  question  of  the  primitive  ecclesia 
without  being  dependent  upon  second-hand  sources  must  be 
able  to  handle  patristic  literature  for  himself,  as  Hatch  and 
Lightfoot  do.  He  should  be  familiar  with  the  great  systems 
of  Church  and  State  relationships — the  Byzantine,  the  Roman, 
the  Erastian — as  well  as  that  which  proceeds  upon  the  theory 
of  the  entire  separation  of  the  one  from  the  other.  Because 
a  man  is  a  Presbyterian  minister  he  is  not  cut  off  from  interest 
in  other  communions,  and  if  his  specialty  is  Church  govern- 
ment he  ought  to  know  and  be  familiar  with  the  great  admin- 
istrative problems  in  other  communions.  The  decisions  of  the 
Court  of  Arches  and  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  regard  to  points  of  doctrine  and  ritual  in  the  Church 
of  England  ought  to  interest  him.  The  great  struggle  for 
spiritual  independence  which  culminated  in  the  Scottish  dis- 
ruption of  1843  should  be  known  by  him  as  he  knows  the 
history  of  his  own  Church;  and  the  law  of  his  Church,  as 
laid  down  in  the  Book  of  Discipline,  and  the  judicial  decisions 
of  the  General  Assembly  should  be  read  in  the  light  of  Par- 
dovan's  Collections  and,  for  that  matter,  in  the  light  of  the 
Canon  law.  What  would  be  said  if  I  should  recommend  theo- 
logical students  to  take  a  course  in  Roman  Law?  And  yet  I 
am  sure  that  such  a  course  would  be  useful  to  them.  And 
then  there  is  the  whole  question  of  the  Church  in  relation  to 
the  law  of  the  land — the  law  of  the  land  regarding  Church 
property,  regarding  the  conclusive  character  of  ecclesiastical 
sentences,  as  laid  down  in  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court 


THEOLOGICAL   ENCYCLOPAEDIA  17 

of  the  United  States  in  the  Walnut  Street  Church  case,  and 
the  laws  of  the  several  States  regarding  marriage  and  divorce. 
These  are  all  matters  which  are  within  the  legitmate  province 
of  the  minister. 

The  last  subject  which  claims  consideration  under  the  head 
of  Ecclesiastical  Theology  is  (3)  the  Work  and  Worship  of 
the  Church.  Two  questions  present  themselves  in  this  con- 
nection: the  question  of  extending  the  Church's  influence 
and  that  of  promoting  the  spiritual  well-being  of  her  mem- 
bers. Missions,  Pastoral  Theology,  Liturgies,  Homiletics — 
these  and  topics  like  these  should  be  dealt  with  under  this 
department.  A  course  of  lectures  on  Missions,  such  as  those 
delivered  here  by  Dr.  Dennis  and  others,  is  a  great  addition  to 
the  Seminary's  curriculum.  Lectures  on  the  history  of  mis- 
sions, the  missionary  problems,  the  bearing  of  missions  on 
the  statesmanship  of  the  world,  and  the  bearing  of  diplomacy 
on  the  future  of  Christianity — these  are  great  subjects  and 
fitted  to  awaken  the  highest  enthusiasm  of  any  man  who  will 
approach  them  with  interest  and  sufficient  breadth  of  vision. 

I  do  not  dwell  on  the  subject  of  Pastoral  Theology,  but  I 
will  take  the  liberty  to  say  to  my  younger  brethren  that  we 
ministers  need  all  the  good  advice  we  can  get  respecting  the 
exercise  of  tact  and  good  sense,  respecting  the  care  of  our 
life  and  the  avoidance  of  those  things  that  mar  our  influence. 
A  Professor  in  this  Seminary  once  thought  it  not  beneath  his 
dignity  to  write  a  book  on  Clerical  Manners  and  I  have  some- 
times thought  that  a  new  edition  of  that  book,  brought  down 
to  date,  with  some  additional  suggestions  as  to  the  amenities 
of  social  life,  is  greatly  needed. 

I  have  very  little  to  say  regarding  Homiletics,  though  if,  as 
with  most  of  us  it  is  the  case,  our  productive  activity  is  to 
spend  itself  in  making  sermons,  I  do  not  see  how  we  can 
fail  to  attach  great  importance  to  the  subject.  The  minister 
who  does  not  know  what  Shedd  and  Phelps  have  said  on 
sermonizing  shows  great  indifference,  it  seems  to  me,  to  the 
attainment  of  excellence  in  his  profession.  A  man  who  makes 
a  serious  study  of  this  subject  and  brings  to  it  a  well-furnished 
mind,  will  need  none  of  the  popular  homiletical  helps  and  can 


l8  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

afford  to  throw  his  Dictionary  of  Illustrations  out  of  the 
window.  I  do  not  feel  the  difficulty  which  some  experience  in 
settling  the  boundary  lines  of  plagiarism.  A  full  man,  with  a 
fresh  mind,  after  sufficient  brooding  on  his  text,  will  get  down 
to  the  roots  of  the  text,  will  see  what  nobody  else  will  see  in 
the  same  light;  for  the  thing  seen,  to  use  a  Kantianism,  is 
not  the  text-in-itself,  but  the  text-in-itself  in  relation  to  the 
man-in-himself ;  and  this  being  the  ca^se,  if  the  man-in-him- 
self  be  a  man^ — that  is,  if  he  has  grown  out  of  his  babyhood 
and  rounded  into  a  separate  mind — the  possibilities  are  infinite 
respecting  the  sermons  that  may  be  preached  from  any  text. 
And  so  I  say  to  my  younger  brethren  in  the  ministry,  and 
especially  to  the  young  men  who  have  not  yet  entered  it :  get 
powers  of  expression,  get  knowledge,  get  thought-power,  get 
rich  Christian  experience,  get  a  knowledge  of  homiletical 
technique,  and  then  let  the  sermon  be  yours — nay,  rather,  let  it 
be  you.  Let  it  be  an  arrow  shot  from  the  tense  bow-string 
of  conviction  and  it  will  hit  the  mark  every  time. 

But  the  sermon  is  not  the  only  thing  in  the  worship  of  the 
Church,  and  in  some  Churches  it  is  not  the  most  important 
thing.  We  belong  to  the  non-liturgical  family  of  Churches, 
and  music  does  not  hold  the  place  in  our  Church  that  it  occu- 
pies in  some  other  branches  of  Christendom.  But  that  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  fail  to  provide  proper  instruction  in 
our  Seminaries  in  Church  music  of  the  better  sort  or  ignore 
the  great  devotional  formulas  which  have  fed  the  spiritual 
life  of  generations  of  Christians.  I  should  say  that  it  is  the 
minister  of  the  non-liturgical  Church,  since  he  is  expected  to  be 
ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  express  himself  in  apt,  elevated, 
rhythmical,  devotional  language,  who  is  likely  to  be  most 
profited  by  familiar  acquaintance  with  the  liturgical  formulas 
of  the  Christian  Church.  For  the  nurture  of  his  own  spiritual 
life,  and  for  his  greater  efficiency  as  a  minister  of  the  Word, 
I  commend  to  every  theological  student  the  duty  of  having  an 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  Word  of  God  in  the  English 
tongue;  but  I  would  also  commend  to  him  the  duty  of  famil- 
iarizing himself  with  the  Church's  best  literature  of  devotion, 
and  whether  it  be  the  Imitation  of  Christ,  or  The  Christian 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  19 

Year^  or  The  Book  of  Common  Prayer  that  claims  his  atten- 
tion; whether  it  be  the  hymns  of  Watts  or  Doddridge  or 
Wesley,  or  Faber  or  Newman,  or  Bonar  or  Heber  in  which 
his  religious  feelings  find  expression,  let  him  remember  that 
the  meditations,  the  prayers,  the  hymns  of  Christian  men  of 
all  ages  are  the  common  heritage  of  the  Christian  world. 

11. 

Antithesis. 

We  are  now  to  deal  with  that  part  of  Theology  which  re- 
gards the  Christian  system  as  antithetically  related  to  oppos- 
ing forms  of  thought.  In  the  early  days  of  the  Reformed 
-Theology  all  defenses  of  revealed  truths  were  included  under 
the  name  Polemic  Theology.  Thus  Stapfer,  in  the  second 
and  third  volumes  of  his  Polemic  Theology,  deals  in  succes- 
sion with  Atheism,  Deism,  Epicureanism,  Ethnicism,  Natural- 
ism, Judaism,  Mohammedanism,  Socinianism,  Romanism, 
Fanaticism,  Pelagianism,  and  reaches  his  climax  in  his  chapter 
against  the  Remonstrants  and  the  Anabaptists.  The  classifi- 
cation exhibits  all  the  faults  that  are  conceivable  in  a  discus- 
sion of  this  kind.  I  shall  not  call  attention  to  them  further 
than  to  say  that  there  is  a  great  difference  between  those  con- 
troversies whose  area  is  within  the  Christian  communions  and 
those  which  are  carried  on  against  men  who  deny  the  super- 
naturalism  of  Christianity.  Polemic  Theology  pertains  to  the 
first.  Apologetic  Theology  to  the  second. 

I.  Polemic  Theology. — The  phrase  does  not  have  a  very 
amiable  sound,  and  on  that  account  some  would  like  to  have  it 
superseded  by  a  less  warlike  form  of  expression.  But  I  do 
not  know  that  we  should  quarrel  with  the  adjective,  if  that  for 
which  it  stands  is  an  accepted  fact.  If  the  rupture  with  Rome 
was  justifiable  a  Protestant  polemic  becomes  a  necessity — 
that  is  to  say,  we  must  defend  our  position.  It  is  a  pity  that 
Protestantism  has  undergone  the  process  of  division  into 
sects,  but  it  is  the  inevitable  logic  of  its  postulates.  When 
the  doctrine  of  the  one  visible  corporate  Church  is  parted 
with,  as  Protestantism  necessarily  parts  with  it,  there  is  no 


20  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

logical  stopping-place,  and  we  may  multiply  sects  indefinitely. 
For  when  the  basis  of  the  organization  is  not  the  Creed  which 
shall  include  the  largest  number  of  Christians,  but  that  which 
shall  embrace  the  largest  number  of  doctrines,  and  which  shall 
express  them  in  the  best  and  most  Scriptural  manner,  you  of 
course  see  what  will  be  the  result.  Creeds  will  multiply,  and 
sects  will  multiply.  The  greater  the  extension  the  less  the 
intension;  the  greater  the  intension  the  le*ss  the  extension. 

Suppose,  now,  that  you  belong  to  one  of  these  Churches 
and  accept  its  creed-statements.  Suppose  that  men  outside 
of  your  communion  revile  your  doctrines,  ridicule  your  faith 
and  misrepresent  your  most  cherished  convictions.  Are  you 
not  to  be  allowed  to  defend  yourself?  Suppose  that  when 
there  is  peace  within  your  walls  and  prosperity  within  your 
palaces,  there  arise  those  within  your  communion  who  flaunt 
their  ridicule  of  the  creed  to  which  they  have  subscribed  in 
the  faces  of  the  congregations  which  they  serve.  Are  you  to 
do  nothing?  Have  you  no  right  to  stand  up  in  defense  of 
what  you  believe  to  be  precious  truth?  Now  these  are  pre- 
cisely the  occasions  that  develop  the  controversial  element  in 
the  Church's  life.  I  do  not  see,  therefore,  how  we  can  help 
having  a  place  for  Polemic  Theology  in  the  Theological  Ency- 
clopaedia. I  do  not  understand  Polemic  Theology  to  mean  a 
bitter  spirit.  It  is  simply  the  intellectual  outcome  of  a  condi- 
tion of  things  in  which  a  witness-bearing  Church,  prompted 
by  zeal  for  the  truth  and  a  holy  instinct  of  self-preservation, 
girds  itself  to  do  battle  against  what  it  believes  to  be  error. 

2.  Apologetic  Theology. — Polemic  Theology,  as  I  have 
said,  at  one  time  included  all  that  we  now  designate  as  Apolo- 
getics; and  Apologetics  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  polemic, 
only  its  warfare  is  carried  on  between  those  who  believe  and 
those  who  deny  a  Supernatural  Revelation.  And  yet  the  irenic 
character  of  Apologetics  is  very  decided  also.  It  must  needs 
soften  the  tone  of  controversy  for  us  to  remember  that,  differ 
as  we  may,  in  some  points,  from  our  brethren  in  other  com- 
munions, we  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  them  in  defense 
of  more  important  truth.  Says  Delitzsch  in  his  Apologetik: 
"  When  we  are  carried  along  by  Tertullian's  Apologetics  and 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  21 

wonder  at  his  depth  and  wealth  of  thought,  we  thank  God 
that  the  Church  has  had  a  man  who  with  such  power  was 
able  to  wield  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  and  we  forget  his  Mon- 
tanism.  And  when  we  read  the  learned  and  elegant  book  de 
veritate  religionis  Christiance  which  Grotius  wrote  as  a  pastime 
during  a  sea  voyage  for  those  who  traveled  in  heathen  lands, 
we  take  our  Christian  brother  by  the  hand  without  feeling  sore 
at  his  Arminianism.  So,  too,  we  recognize  Paley,  the  author 
of  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,  and  Butler,  the  author  of  the 
Analogy,  and  all  the  great  English  and  American  defenders 
of  Christian  truth,  without  asking  questions  respecting  their 
ecclesiastical  connections.  And  when  among  the  later  apolo- 
getes  we  recognize  in  Drey,  Dreisinger,  Staudenmeier,  and 
lastly  Hettinger  four  distinguished  Catholic  investigators, 
without,  in  so  doing,  making  any  treaty  with  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  we  greet  them  with  a  hearty  pax  vobiscum/' 
The  encyclopaedists  are  fond  of  -distinguishing  between 
Apology  and  Apologetics — and  the  distinction  is  a  sound  one. 
Apologies  are  as  old  as  Christianity;  systems  of  Apologetics 
do  not  go  back  of  the  nineteenth  century.  TertuUian  wrote 
an  Apology,  and  when  the  early  Christian  Fathers  defended 
themselves  and  their  religion  against  the  particular  allegations 
made  against  them  they  wrote  Apologies;  so  when  the  eigh- 
teenth century  deists  called  out  the  great  apologetic  literature 
of  that  period,  the  greatest  in  the  annals  of  the  Church  of 
any  period,  they  wrote  Apologies.  That  is  to  say,  they  wrote 
special  defenses  of  Christianity  from  particular  points  of  view 
and  covering  the  particular  questions  then  in  issue.  But  when, 
instead  of  dealing  with  a  particular  controversy,  we  consider 
how  the  Christian  religion  shall  justify  its  claims  to  be  a 
supernaturally  revealed  religion,  we  are  dealing  with  a  much 
broader  and  more  abstract  question.  When  Lightfoot  defends 
the  historical  trustworthiness  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment against  the  author  of  Supernatural  Religion,  he  is  writ- 
ing an  Apology.  But  when  Ebrard  or  Sack  or  Baumstark 
writes  a  systematic  defense  of  Christianity  as  a  supernatural 
religion,  he  writes  an  Apologetic.  It  is  because  Apologetic 
has  this  character  of  systematic  or  organic  completeness,  I 


22  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

suppose,  that  some  encyclopaedists  regard  it  as  a  branch  of 
Systematic  Theology.  But  there  is  a  great  difference,  I  think, 
between  our  conception  of  Apologetic  and  that  of  Systematic 
Theology.  The  motive  in  Systematic  Theology  is  didactic; 
that  in  Apologetic  Theology  is  polemic.  Let  it  be  understood, 
then,  that  Apologetics  is  a  systematic  exhibition  of  the  de- 
fenses of  Christianity.  The  apologete  is  not  seeking  to  defend 
Calvinism  or  Arminianism  or  Lutheranism"  or  Romanism  as 
such.  He  is  seeking  to  defend  that  core  of  truth  which  these 
systems  hold  in  common.  We  are  in  a  different  attitude  al- 
together when  we  speak  as  dogmaticians  and  when  we  speak 
as  apologetes.  As  dogmaticians  we  ask:  What  do  we  know 
concerning  God?  It  is  the  truth  and  the  whole  truth  we  are 
in  quest  of.  It  will  be  the  maximum  quid  of  belief,  therefore, 
that  will  be  our  object.  But  as  apologetes  we  ask :  How  can 
the  truth  which  differentiates  Christianity  from  all  other  re- 
ligions, and  which  the  various  sects  of  Christians  hold  in 
common,  be  defended?  It  is  the  minimum  quid  which  we 
are  seeking.  What  is  that  truth  which,  if  a  man  believe,  he 
shall  be  saved?  What  is  the  truth  which  represents  the  es- 
sence of  Christianity — understanding  by  essence,  to  use  Spin- 
oza's words,  "  that  without  which  the  thing,  and  which  itself 
without  the  thing,  can  neither  be  nor  be  conceived  "  ?  On  the 
one  hand  the  man  who  reduces  Christianity  to  morality,  who 
gives  up  miracles  and  makes  no  numerical  distinction  between 
God  and  the  finite  spirits  whom  he  has  created,  minimizes  too 
much.  Therefore,  when  men  like  Matthew  Arnold  play  the 
part  of  apologetes  and  wish  to  be  regarded  as  defenders  of 
the  faith,  we  reject  their  kind  offers  at  once — non  tali  auxilio 
nee  defensoribus  istis.  And  yet  is  it  not  just  as  true  that  there 
are  good  Christian  men  whose  views  on  the  Trinity,  the  Per- 
son of  Christ,  the  Atonement,  the  nature  of  Sin,  the  question 
of  Retribution,  and  the  doctrine  of  Inspiration  are  erroneous  ? 
Clearly,  therefore,  when  we  undertake  the  work  of  Apolo- 
getics we  must  take  as  our  starting-point  what  we  regard  as 
essential  Christianity.  Where  shall  we  find  it?  Is  it  not 
here — to  wit,  *'that  God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world 
unto  himself,  not  imputing  unto  men  their  trespasses  "  ? 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 


23 


III. 

Synthesis 

The  cathedral,  some  one  has  said,  is  the  synthesis  of  all  the 
forms  of  art.  Its  beauty  and  the  impressiveness  of  its  services 
are  largely  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  blending  of  archi- 
tecture, sculpture,  painting  and  music.  What  the  cathedral 
is  to  the  arts,  Systematic  Theology  is  to  the  several  Disciplines 
that  enter  into  theological  study.  The  Systematic  Theologian 
is  an  architect.  Less  accomplished,  perhaps,  than  others  in 
the  knowledge  of  any  one  specialty,  he  must  be  more  accom- 
plished than  any  in  the  knowledge  of  all  specialties.  His  spec- 
ialty is  the  knowledge  of  the  results  in  all  specialties.  Like 
the  professed  Biblical  Theologian  he  gets  his  doctrines  out  of 
the  Bible,  but  his  work  does  not  stop  with  exegesis.  He  sees 
the  doctrines  not  only  as  separately  deducible  from  Scripture, 
but  as  progressively  unfolded  in  Scripture.  He  sees  them  as  the 
subjects  of  varying  fortunes  in  the  course  of  history,  as  defend- 
ed here  and  antagonized  there.  He  sees  them  as  the  subjects  of 
controversy  and  as  the  constituent  elements  in  ecclesiastical 
symbols.  He  knows,  moreover,  that  while  some  truths  regard- 
mg  God  are  taught  in  the  Bible  and  nowhere  else,  other  truths 
may  be  seen  in  the  light  of  nature.  But  these  truths  of  natural 
religion  stand  polemically  related  to  those  forms  of  philosophic 
thought  which  deny  them.  And  the  truths  of  Revealed  Relig- 
ion have  felt  the  warping,  blighting,  compromising  influence 
of  a  false  philosophy.  The  Systematic  Theologian  in  the  very 
act  of  being  a  Systematic  Theologian  must  be  an  Apologetic 
Theologian,  must  be  a  Polemic  Theologian,  must  be  a  student 
of  philosophy,  must  be  a  Biblical  Theologian,  must  be  familiar 
with  ecclesiastical  history,  must  know  the  ins  and  outs  of  ec- 
clesiastical life.  All  this  goes  to  justify  me  in  saying  that 
Systematic  Theology  is  not  a  department  that  is  coordinate 
with  Exegetical  Theology,  with  Historical  Theology,  with 
Practical  Theology.  Rather  is  it  the  synthesis  of  all  these 
Disciplines  which  we  have  been  considering.     This,  at  least, 


24  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

is  the  place  that  I  feel  bound  to  give  it  in  the  outline  of  Theo- 
logical Encyclopaedia  which  I  am  presenting  here. 

The  grandeur  of  Systematic  Theology  thus  conceived  will 
hardly  be  denied.  The  legitimacy  of  the  Systematic  Theolo- 
gian's undertaking  cannot  be  called  in  question.  Even  when 
men  have  given  fonn  to  systems  foreign  to  our  mode  of 
thought  and  far  away  from  what  we  believe  to  be  true  it  is 
impossible  not  to  admire  and  to  wonder  at  the  vast  construc- 
tive power  their  systems  manifest.  The  first  question  is,  of 
course,  whether  or  no  God  has  spoken.  For  if  he  has  spoken, 
it  is  certain  that  he  has  not  said  one  thing  or  two.  He  has 
said  a  great  many  things.  And  these  parts  of  the  Divine 
message  sustain  relations  to  one  another.  What  are  these 
relations?  It  is  said  that  God  has  not  given  us  a  Systematic 
Theology  in  the  Bible.  Neither  has  he  given  us  a  ready-made 
Astronomy  nor  a  ready-made  Biology.  Linnaeus  had  to  work 
for  his  classification.  God  has  not  planted  nature  like  a  park 
with  studied  reference  to  orders,  genera  and  species.  It  is 
said  that  logic  is  a  snare,  and  I  have  heard  ministers  in  the 
pulpit  grow  eloquent  over  the  ensnaring  power  of  logic  when  it 
was  quite  evident  that,  however  much  other  people  were  suff- 
ering by  it,  they  were  entirely  safe  themselves.  I  am  not 
ready  to  say  credo  quia  impossihile,  or  credo  quia  absurdum  est. 
I  do  not  think  we  can  save  our  faith  by  discarding  our  intel- 
lects. The  world  will  not  long  continue  to  value  a  religion 
which  it  believes  to  be  irrational,  no  matter  who  it  is  that  com- 
mends it  to  our  consideration.  And  whether  it  be  Tertullian 
or  Ritschl,  or  Herrmann  or  Coleridge,  or  Isaac  Taylor  or 
Balfour,  or  Kidd  or  Mallock,  or  the  modern  high-potency  di- 
lutionists  of  the  Ritschlian  School,  who  in  this  country  are 
giving  us  an  ethico-sentimental  naturalism  as  the  new  Gospel 
for  the  twentieth  century,  I  make  bold  to  tell  them  all  alike 
that  Christianity  will  be  denied  a  hearing  in  the  court  of  feeling 
once  she  has  been  non-suited  at  the  bar  of  reason. 

The  theme  of  Systematic  Theology  is  the  sum  of  our  knowl- 
edge regarding  God.  This  includes  of  course,  human  con- 
duct ;  and  it  is  quite  possible  to  include  both  faith  and  practice 
under  one  set  of  categories.    Thus  Turretine  discusses  morality 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  25 

under  the  Law;  so  does  Dr.  Charles  Hodge.  But  it  is  not 
common  to  do  this.  In  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  the  dis- 
tinction is  clearly  marked  between  Dogmatic  and  Moral  Theol- 
ogy— the  latter  being  largely  occupied  with  the  solution  of 
difficult  questions  of  casuistry.  And  in  the  Protestant  Churches 
the  distinction  between  dogmatics  and  ethics  has  been  recog- 
nized since  the  seventeenth  century.  It  was  first  made  for  the 
Reformed  Church  by  Danseus,  and  for  the  Lutheran  Church 
by  Calixtus. 

I.  Christian  Ethics. — A  theologian,  of  course,  can  limit 
himself  to  the  discussion  of  those  practical  questions  of 
conduct  which  represent  the  difference  between  rational  ethics 
and  revealed  ethics.  He  may  say  that  his  field  of  conduct  is 
conditioned  by  Christianity.  But,  perplexing  as  some  of  the 
questions  will  be  that  fall  within  this  area,  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  he  cannot  limit  himself  to  this  area.  He  will  feel, 
I  am  confident,  that  the  entire  territory  of  morals  is  his. 
Fundamental  questions  regarding  Moral  Obligation,  the  Good 
and  the  Right,  will  confront  him  and  he  will  find  it  impossible 
to  ignore  what  is  being  said  or  what  has  been  said  by  men  like 
Sidgwick  and  Green,  and  Spencer  and  Martineau,  and  Taylor 
and  Shadworth  Hodgson  and  Paulsen. 

Again,  the  Professor  of  Christian  Ethics  must  not  only  con- 
sider the  law  of  Christianity  conditioning  conduct;  he  must 
also,  or,  rather,  he  may  also,  consider  the  Christian's  ethical 
state  in  relation  to  this  law ;  for  Christian  ethics  not  only  sees 
the  Christian  in  the  light  of  the  new  obligations  imposed  by  the 
law  of  Christ,  it  also  sees  him  in  the  light  of  his  new  ethical 
state  produced  by  the  Holy  Spirit.  So  that  the  whole  question 
of  Regeneration  and  Sanctification  may  properly  come  under 
Christian  Ethics,  and  this  is  a  very  large  part  of  Dogmatic 
Theology.  In  fact,  to  such  an  extent  do  Dogmatics  and  Ethics 
overlap  that  in  some  writers,  as  in  Nitzsch  and  Rothe,  the 
whole  or  nearly  the  whole  dogmatic  area  is  covered  by  the  de- 
partment of  Christian  Ethics. 

But  it  is  distinctly  to  the  department  of  Christian  Ethics, 
and  not  to  that  of  Practical  Theology,  that  the  discussion  of 
the  great  social  problems  of  the  day  belongs.     That  these 


26  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

problems  should  be  discussed,  that  the  Church  should  have 
something  to  say  in  regard  to  the  poverty,  disease  and  crime 
that  seem  to  be  the  inevitable  result  of  the  congested  life  of 
our  large  cities,  and  that  there  is  moreover  a  great  and  practi- 
cal work  to  be  done  in  reference  to  the  pathological  conditions 
of  society  through  organized  philanthropic  agency,  there  can 
be  no  doubt;  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  call  this  Sociology,  and  it 
is  worse  than  a  mistake  when  under  the  n^me  of  Christian 
Sociology  work  of  this  sort  is  made  a  substitute  for  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Gospel.  For  Sociology  in  its  proper  sense  I  have 
great  respect ;  but  for  that  shallow  compound  of  sociology  and 
sentimentality  which  is  just  now  the  largest  output  of  the  new 
Christianity,  I  have  none,  for  it  satisfies  neither  my  intellect 
nor  my  feelings. 

The  man  who  would  deal  adequately  with  the  social  problem 
must  know,  to  begin  with,  what  men  like  Baldwin  and  Giddings 
have  to  say  regarding  the  psychology  of  social  life;  he  must 
know,  whether  he  agrees  with  them  or  not,  what  men  like 
Mackenzie  and  Bosanquet  have  to  say  regarding  the  metaphys- 
ics of  society  and  its  final  cause.  He  must  have  more  than  a 
superficial  knowledge  of  the  evolution  of  our  institutional  life 
which  has  given  us  in  their  present  forms  the  Family,  the 
Church  and  the  State ;  he  must  understand  the  principles  of  the 
great  normative  sciences  of  ethics  and  jurisprudence  which 
deal  respectively  with  the  life  of  the  individual  and  the  or- 
ganism; he  must  know  something  of  the  economic  laws  that 
underlie  the  growth  of  industrialism;  and  then,  perhaps,  he 
may  hope  to  address  himself  to  the  great  pathological  problems 
and  make  an  intelligent  application  to  them  of  the  ethical 
principles  of  Christianity.  But,  then,  who  is  suf^cient  for 
these  things? 

2.  Dogmatics. — I  cannot  undertake  to  name  and  crit- 
icise the  various  definitions  that  have  been  given  of  Dogmatic 
Theology;  but  I  prefer  to  say  that  Dogmatic  Theology  is  a 
systematic  exhibition  of  our  knowledge  regarding  God.  Its 
content,  then,  is  knowledge.  It  is  what  we  know  and  have 
good  reason  for  knowing,  whatever  that  reason  may  be.  It  is 
knowledge  regarding  God.     It  may,   and  does,   include  the 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 


V 


knowledge  of  a  great  many  things  besides  God;  but  it  is  the 
knowledge  of  those  things  in  their  Godward  relationships. 
God  is  the  great  category  under  which  all  the  knowledge  which 
Dogmatic  has  for  content  is  subsumed.  It  is  systematic  knowl- 
edge. It  is  not  simply  the  knowledge  of  separate  dogmas.  It 
is  articulated  knowledge.  It  is  knowledge  that  has  been 
brought  together  under  great  dominant  generalizations.  You 
see,  then,  at  once  what  a  broad  field  the  dogmatic  theologian 
has  before  him.  What  a  splendid  history  Dogmatic  Theology 
has  had !  I  can  hardly  imagine  a  more  interesting  study  than 
that  of  going  through  the  dogmatic  writers  from  the  Reforma- 
tion down  to  our  own  day,  for  the  purpose  of  comparing  their 
methods  and  of  watching  the  influence  of  prevailing  philoso- 
phies upon  their  forms  of  statement.  With  the  help  of  writers 
on  dogmatic  history  like  Gass  and  Ebrard,  and  Schweizer  and 
Heppe,  this  ought  not  to  be  a  difficult  thing,  and  it  certainly 
would  be  an  interesting  thing  to  do. 

As  the  result  of  such  a  study  we  should  find  that  the  Sys- 
tematic Theology  which  had  been  developed  so  fully  under 
philosophical  domination  from  Albert  the  Great  to  Aquinas, 
and  which  in  the  declining  days  of  Scholasticism  went  through 
a  waning  process,  was  developed  under  the  polemic  condi- 
tions of  the  Reformation  into  new  activity.  The  Reforma- 
tion principle  of  the  Bible  as  the  rule  of  faith  gave  us  a 
period  of  dogmatic  supernaturalism.  First  we  have  the  three 
great  dogmaticians  of  the  Reformation — Melanchthon  in  his 
Loci  communes,  Zwingli  in  his  de  vera  et  falsa  Religione, 
and  Calvin  in  his  Institutio  Christiance  rcligionis.  Then  came 
the  separation  of  the  Lutheran  and  Reformed  Theologies, 
the  latter  proceeding  until  differences  found  expression  in 
the  antithesis  of  Gomarus  and  Arminius,  when  we  had  the 
Synod  of  Dort  and  the  extrusion  of  the  Arminian  party. 
Reformed  Theology  still  developed,  ending  in  rival,  antag- 
onistic and  mediating  schools.  There  were  the  Scholastics, 
building  deductively  and  taking  the  eternal  purpose  as  their 
starting-point.  Then  there  were  the  Federalists — Cocceius 
and  Witsius — presenting  theology  as  the  progressive  exhi- 
bition of  the  covenants.     There  were  the  Cartesians,  repre- 


28  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

senting  the  influence  of  philosophy  and  particularly  of  natural 
science — men  like  Voetius  and  Maresius,  who  distinguished  be- 
tween natural  and  revealed  religion,  and  saw  that  supernatural 
revelation  presupposed  the  light  of  nature  and  the  use  of  rea- 
son. Then  came  the  period  when  the  differences  were  recon- 
ciled and  under  the  influence  of  the  Leibnitzo-Wolfian  philoso- 
phy a  theological  Scholasticism  was  presented  which  served 
as  a  mould  by  means  of  which  these  varying  elements  could 
be  pressed  into  shape  and  symmetry.  The  federal  idea  was 
retained ;  the  decrees  were  given  a  conspicuous  place ;  philoso- 
phy was  recognized  as  having  some  function  and  the  great 
systems  of  the  seventeenth  century  came  forth,  notably  that 
of  Turretine — the  Thomas  Aquinas  of  Protestantism. 

Lutheranism,  too,  went  through  its  period  of  development, 
as  Ebrard  shows;  but  I  have  time  only  to  refer  to  this  fact 
which  Ebrard  brings  out,  that  while  the  Reformed  Theology 
was  systematic  first  and  dogmatic  afterward,  the  Lutheran 
Theology  was  dogmatic  first  and  systematic  afterward.  The 
genius  of  Calvinism  was  to  schematize.  Lutheranism  dwelt 
first  upon  particular  dogmas,  and  reached  its  schematizing 
stage  later.  This  is  worthy  of  notice,  inasmuch  as  in  later 
years  Lutheranism  has  distanced  all  competitors  in  regard  to 
constructive  Dogmatics. 

The  age  of  Supernaturalism  was  followed  by  that  of  Ration- 
alism, in  which  the  attempt  was  made  to  reduce  the  doctrines 
of  Christianity  to  the  level  of  human  reason  and  reject  those 
which  resisted  the  attempt.  Following  this  period  of  Ration- 
alism or,  rather,  when  Rationalism  and  Supernaturalism  were 
the  contending  foes,  when  it  was  a  duel  between  infallible  Bible 
and  infallible  reason,  came  Schleiermacher,  a  sort  of  Platonic 
Methodist,  to  protest  against  the  deification  of  the  intellect  and 
plead  for  the  place  of  the  feelings  in  religion.  But  his  very 
subjectivism  of  the  feelings,  though  protesting  against  the 
subjectivism  of  the  intellect,  was  in  close  alliance  with  the 
subjectivism  of  the  intellect.  Hence,  when  Hegel  arose, 
though  he  was  the  antithesis  of  Schleiermacher  and  ridiculed 
his  definition  of  religion,  he  was  yet  so  related  to  him  that 
mediation  was  not  impossible,  so  that  subsequent  writers  have 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  29 

given  evidence  of  both  influences;  and  Rothe,  when  he  wrote 
his  Ethics,  was  now  a  mystic  and  now  a  speculative  theologian, 
having  one  foot,  as  Lange  expresses  it,  in  Schleiermacher's 
slipper  and  the  other  in  Hegel's  boot.  Hence  arose  the  mediat- 
ing school,  the  school  that  seeks  to  keep  the  good  in  both  sys- 
tems and  preserve  the  historic  continuity  of  Church  doctrine. 
To  this  school  belonged  Nitzsch  and  Ullmann,  and  Dorner  and 
Martensen.  And  now  the  last  movement  is  in  progress,  and 
the  note  of  the  Ritschlian  revolt  from  the  reign  of  Hegel  is 
the  banishment  of  metaphysics  from  theology.  The  good  side 
of  the  movement  is  its  return  to  the  historic  basis  and  its  im- 
patience of  a  theology  which  resolves  the  historic  faith  of 
Christianity  into  the  glittering  generalities  of  the  Hegelian  dia- 
lectic. The  bad  side  of  it  is  the  inevitable  schism  which  it  in- 
troduces into  the  life  of  the  individual  Christian,  between  the 
theology  of  the  intellect  and  the  theology  of  the  feelings.  Say 
what  its  leaders  may  respecting  the  continued  hold  which  these 
doctrines  have  as  value- judgments,  the  system  must  be  judged 
by  its  net  result  of  fact  and  rational  conviction.  No  system 
can  stand  the  strain  of  an  inner  contradiction  which  is  implied 
in  holding  for  true  what  is  believed  to  be  false;  of  believing 
with  the  heart  what  is  discredited  by  the  head.  And  sooner  or 
later  Ritschlianism  must  give  up  its  see-saw  of  Intellect  and 
Feeling  between  Socinianism  and  Evangelical  Christianity  and 
settle  down  to  one  or  the  other. 

Assuming  now  that  the  Systematic  Theologian  has  his  ma- 
terials ready  for  organization  into  system,  what  method  shall 
he  adopt?  This,  of  course,  is  an  important  question  as  a  mat- 
ter of  logic ;  but  the  impression  seems  to  prevail  in  some  quar- 
ters that  it  is  a  vital  question  as  a  matter  of  theological  con- 
tent. This,  however,  I  fail  to  see.  There  is  the  strictly  local 
or  topical  method  of  the  early  theologians  of  Reformation 
times;  there  is  the  federal  method  of  Witsius;  there  is  the 
method  which  makes  the  Trinity  the  basis  of  division,  which 
Calvin  adopts  in  his  Institutes;  there  is  the  method  which  starts 
from  the  anthropological  standpoint  and  discusses  Sin  and  its 
Remedy,  as  Chalmers  does;  there  is  the  strictly  theological 
method  where  everything  is  discussed  under  the  concept  of 


30 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 


God;  and  then  there  is  the  Christocentric  method,  of  which 
so  much  has  been  said  in  recent  years  by  way  of  disparaging 
other  methods.  But,  after  all,  how  can  a  Christocentric  method 
of  schematizing  the  doctrines  affect  the  doctrines  themselves? 
Here  are  your  separate  blocks  of  dogma,  and  each  has  its  own 
significance.  You  can  build  these  blocks  into  any  shape  you 
please :  you  may  build  castles  or  cathedrals ;  but  however  much 
you  change  the  relations  of  these  blocks  to'^each  other,  you 
do  not  on  that  account  change  the  individuality  of  each.  Well, 
then,  put  your  dogmatic  blocks  together  as  symmetry,  logic  and 
the  suggestions  of  your  own  intellect  may  dictate ;  you  do  not 
thereby  change  the  doctrines  themselves.  Your  schematism 
may  not  be  the  same  as  mine,  but  neither  of  us  by  mere  schema- 
tism can  modify  a  single  doctrinal  unit.  No,  depend  upon  it,  no 
new  light  is  going  to  break  forth  from  the  Word  of  God  as 
the  result  of  a  new  schematization  of  the  doctrines.  The  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  a  system  of  doctrine  is  true  is  to  be  tested 
first  of  all  by  the  inquiry  whether  the  doctrines  of  the  system 
are  true.  If  they  are  true,  then  the  building;  of  them  into  sys- 
tems is  not  only  the  natural  but  the  necessary  putcome  of  that 
type  of  intellect  that  seeks  order  and  symmetry,  and  sees  re- 
lated truths  in  the  light  of  great  generalizations. 

I  know  that  Systematic  Theology  is  discredited  in  some 
quarters;  some  seem  to  think  that  it  stands  as  a  barrier  to 
religious  fervor  and  practical  piety;  some  tell  us  that  we 
must  get  ready  for  a  theological  reconstruction  and  that  the 
time  for  that  reconstruction  is  at  hand.  But  the  only  con- 
sistent despisers  of  Systematic  Theology  are  those  who  in 
their  hearts  believe,  however  slow  they  may  be  to  confess 
it,  that  in  the  light  of  history  as  it  is  now  read,  and  of 
philosophy  as  it  is  now  studied,  and  of  science  as  it  is  now 
proclaimed,  there  is  little  or  no  rational  content  for  Sys- 
tematic Theology.  If  the  Church's  Dogmatic  is  the  result 
of  a  Hellenizing  process ;  if  the  body  of  Catholic  doctrines  is 
a  parasitic  growth  which  has  fastened  itself  upon  the  original 
simple  cult  of  Jesus,  and  if,  as  Hamack  believes,  the  Reforma- 
tion is  only  an  imperfect  attempt  to  restore  this  simple  undog- 
matic  faith,  then  I  grant  you  that  a  Systematic  Theology  of 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  31 

very  modest  proportions  is  all  we  need.  We  need  talk  no  more 
of  cathedrals  as  symbols  of  our  dogmatic  system.  The  hum- 
blest two-room  hut,  without  paint  or  decoration,  without  even 
a  common  wayside  flower  in  the  window  to  tell  the  presence 
within  of  a  heart  that  is  touched  with  feeling  or  an  eye  that 
kindles  in  the  warming  presence  of  beauty,  will  be  a  sufficient 
exponent  of  the  poverty  and  desolation  that  must  inevitably 
come  as  the  result  of  this  conception  of  the  origin  and  growth 
of  the  Christian  Church.  But  if  the  Bible  is  true,  and  the 
Church  is  built  upon  the  foundation  of  the  apostles  and  proph- 
ets, Jesus  Christ  himself  being  the  chief  cornerstone,  then  the 
labors  of  the  Fathers,  and  the  decisions  of  Councils,  and  the 
controversies  of  theologians  have  been  inspired  by  the  efforts 
of  earnest  men  to  do  honor  to  the  Word  of  God.  And  the 
great  systems  of  divinity  which  stretch  like  mountain  peaks 
before  the  field  of  our  vision  are  monumental  tributes  which 
the  Church  of  God,  through  the  writings  of  her  gifted  men, 
has  had  the  unspeakable  honor  of  paying  to  her  exalted  and 
incarnate  Head. 

I  do  not  look  for  an  immediate  revival  of  interest  in  Sys- 
tematic Theology,  and  yet  I  know  that  the  greatest  achieve- 
ment of  the  American  Church  is  in  this  sphere.  The  Church 
of  England  has  done  magnificant  work  in  Biblical  literature,  in 
Apologetics  and  in  Dogmatic  discussion.  But  nearly  half  a 
century  ago  Bishop  Ellicott  deplored  her  lack  of  interest  in 
Systematic  Theology.  The  American  Churches — I  refer  par- 
ticularly to  the  Presbyterian  and  Congregational  Churches — 
have  won  the  conspicuous  place  they  hold  in  theological  liter- 
ature through  the  labors  of  their  systematic  theologians. 
Think  of  the  names  in  the  great  roster  of  American  theologians 
which  come  instantly  to  your  lips  without  effort  or  need  of 
reference  to  the  books  that  stand  on  your  shelves — Edwards, 
Hopkins,  Emmons,  Taylor,  Park,  Hodge,  Breckinridge, 
Thornwell,  Dabney,  Finney,  Shedd,  Henry  B.  Smith — sys- 
tematic theologians  every  one.  Shall  we  turn  this  page  in  the 
history  of  American  theology  and  look  upon  it  as  the  record 
of  a  vast  mistake?  Has  the  new  Christianity  taught  us  only 
to  believe  that  these  were  visionary  and  misguided  men? 


32^  THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

I  agree  with  Harnack  and  the  Ritschlians  generally  in 
giving  the  primacy  to  our  instinctive  judgments  of  worth; 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  a  schism  between  faith 
and  knowledge,  between  our  value- judgments  and  scientific 
truth.  And  what  is  more,  I  believe  that  unless  these  value- 
judgments  are  rooted  in  a  sound  metaphysic,  they  will  lose 
their  controlling  influence  on  life.  I  admit  that  it  is  religion, 
as  Harnack  says,  that  gives  life  its  meaning:  Rob  life  of  its 
faith  in  God,  its  hope  of  immortality  and  the  ethical  ideals  we 
owe  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  and  life  shrivels  into  a  meaning- 
less medley  of  hope  and  fear,  of  pain  and  struggle,  of  unsatis- 
fied desire,  of  sated  appetite,  of  selfish  ambition  and  the  tender 
memories  of  cherished  love.  But  who  shall  say  that  Nature 
has  anything  better  for  us  than  bitter  disappointments  ?  Jesus, 
you  tell  me,  has  revealed  God  and  told  me  that  God  is  my 
Father.  But  how  do  we  know  that  Jesus  speaks  with  authority  ? 
How,  without  the  Divinity  which  we  claim  for  him  and  the 
miraculous  evidence  that  accredits  that  Divinity,  do  we  feel 
sure  of  his  authority?  Because  his  message  wakes  echoes  in 
our  souls,  you  say,  and  his  words  find  responses  in  our  nature. 
Then  his  authority  is  no  higher  than  our  higher  impulses.  But 
when  we  are  told  that  these  higher  impulses  have  come  by  way 
of  natural  development,  and  that  even  Jesus  is  only  an  event 
in  the  great  cosmic  process,  what  shall  our  answer  be  ?  When 
these  finer  feelings,  these  ethical  ideals,  these  tender  instincts 
are  nipped  by  the  frost  of  a  pitiless  naturalism,  what  shall  we 
say  ?  Say  that  we  will  not  give  up  ?  Say  that  we  will  set  the 
world  of  value- judgments  against  the  world  of  cosmic  fact  and 
by  sheer  assertion  win  the  victory  for  faith  and  love?  Very 
well;  but  then  your  minimized  Christianity  is  no  help  in  the 
fight  against  a  naturalistic  philosophy.  It  is  only  a  theistic  ethic 
taught  by  Jesus,  and  instead  of  banishing  metaphysics  from  its 
realm  it  is  itself  a  philosophy,  and  stands  or  falls  with  a  theistic 
metaphysic. 

Let  us  understand  the  issue  in  the  great  battle  of  to-day 
for  fundamental  Christianity.  We  had  thought  that  Chris- 
tianity was  more  than  philosophy  and  spoke  with  Divine  au- 
thority; but  in  the  minimized  version  of  Christianity  there 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA  33 

is  nothing  but  philosophy  left.  We  had  thought  it  necessary 
to  defend  a  theistic  metaphysic  and  a  theistic  ethic  as  the  neces- 
sary philosophic  basis  of  a  gospel  which  presented  a  way  of 
salvation  through  an  incarnate  Christ.  But  we  have  little 
heart  even  for  this  struggle  if  Christianity  itself  turns  out, 
after  all,  to  be  only  a  theistic  ethic.  If  our  great  Leader  is 
slain  and  the  citadel  has  capitulated,  why  need  we  longer  make 
a  fruitless  struggle? 

Give  us  the  Incarnation  and  Resurrection  of  Christ,  then 
Sin,  the  Atonement  and  Justification  follow;  and  you  have  a 
Dogmatic  and  Systematic  Theology.  But  eliminate  the  Incar- 
nation, and  then  your  religion  is  an  emotional  morality  con- 
nected with  the  name  of  Jesus,  of  whomi  you  still  speak  in  the 
language  made  sacred  by  long  use  and  early  association;  but 
in  its  last  analysis  it  is  a  moral  philosophy  in  competition  with 
other  moral  philosophies,  and  defended  by  a  theistic  metaphys- 
ic that  has  to  cope  with  another  metaphysic  which  denies  God, 
or  makes  no  distinction  between  him  and  the  works  of  his 
hand. 

I  am  pronouncing  no  judgment  on  men.  I  am  dealing  only 
with  the  relationships  of  thought.  I  know  that  men  are  often 
better  than  their  creeds;  and  that  deep  in  the  core  of  a  man's 
being  there  is  often  a  better  faith  than  that  which  he  can 
formulate  in  words.  I  am  far  from  saying  that  apart  from 
Dogmatic  Christianity  there  is  no  valid  ground  for  a  theistic 
ethic.  But  the  motive  that  will  make  a  man  fight  as  for  his 
hearthstone  and  his  home  in  support  of  that  theistic  ethic  is 
his  abiding  belief  in  the  incarnate  Christ ;  and  the  historic  evi- 
dence for  the  incarnate  Christ  is  one  of  the  great  bulwarks  of 
theistic  belief.  Theism  is  the  logical  pritis  of  the  Incarnation, 
it  is  true,  but  theism  and  the  Incarnation  are  reciprocally  in- 
fluential on  each  other.  This  is  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that 
in  the  defense  of  supernatural  Christianity  everything  is  at 
stake.  And  this  is  the  reason  that  in  the  crisis  of  to-day  we  are 
witnessing  the  greatest  war  of  intellect  that  has  ever  been 
waged  since  the  birthday  of  the  Nazarene. 

Sooner  or  later  I  am  sure  the  eyes  of  men  will  be  opened 
and  they  will  see — would  to  God  they  might  see  it  now ! — that 


34 


THEOLOGICAL  ENCYCLOPAEDIA 


the  great  battle  of  the  twentieth  century  is  in  its  final  issue  a 
struggle  between  a  Dogmatic  Christianity  on  the  one  hand  and 
an  out-and-out  naturalistic  philosophy  on  the  other. 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 
Benjamin  Breckinridge  Warfield 


Introduction:    Difficulty^ of  forming  a  universally  acceptable  conception  of 
our  Lord's  emotional  life.    Effect  of  incarnation.    Ideal  of  virtue. 
Value  of  the  express  attributions  of  specific  emotions  to  him. 
I.    Compassion  and  Love. 

XirXayxvl^onai  and  its  grounds.     Aa/cpiJw  and  KXalu;  arevi^ta  and  dvo- 
(TTcydfw.     Love  to  God  and  man  :  &yavi.(a.     Friendship:  (jyCKiw. 
n.    Indignation  and  Annoyance. 

Inevitableness  of  angry  emotions.  'Opyii.  'AyavaKriu.  'Efippifido/Mi 
and  its  object.  'ETtrt^dw  and  its  ground.  ZiyXos.  Angry  language. 
Ecce  Homo  on  Christ's  resentment. 

in.    Joy  and  Sorrow. 

Man  of  Sorrows  or  Man  of  Joy  ?  ' AyaWidofuii.  Kenan's  perversion. 
Jesus'  hopes  and  illusions  ?  Fundamental  joy.  Xapd.  Lighter  emo- 
tions of  joy  and  sorrow.  The  shadow  of  the  cross.  Suj/^x"  The 
pro-Gethsemane :  Tapda<ru.  The  Agony,  its  elements  and  meaning. 
'ASrjfjLOPiw;  Xvirio/x&i,  iKdafi^ioixaij  ireplXvrros.  The  Dereliction,  Cause 
of  our  Lord's  Death. 

Fimdamental    religious  emotions    unmentioned.      Few  ordinary 
emotions  mentioned :   Bavfid^ut,  iTidvfila,  iTraiax^vofiai. 

Conclusion:  Fulness  of  our  Lord's  emotions.  Reality  of  his  humanity. 
His  individuality.  His  chief  characteristics?  His  comprehensive- 
ness.    Our  model.     Our   Saviour. 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

It  belongs  to  the  truth  of  our  Lord's  humanity,  that  he  was 
subject  to  all  sinless  human  emotions.^  In  the  accounts  which 
the  Evangelists  give  us  of  the  crowded  activities  which  filled 
the  few  years  of  his  ministry,  the  play  of  a  great  variety  of 
emotions  is  depicted.  It  has  nevertheless  not  proved  easy  to 
form  a  universally  acceptable  conception  of  our  Lord's  emo- 
tional life.  Not  only  has  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  en- 
tered in  as  a  disturbing  factor,  the  effect  of  the  divine  nature  on 
the  movements  of  the  human  soul  brought  into  personal  union 
with  it  being  variously  estimated.  Differences  have  arisen  also 
as  to  how  far  there  may  be  attributed  to  a  perfect  human  nature 
movements  known  to  us  only  as  passions  of  sinful  beings. 

Two  opposite  tendencies  early  showed  themselves  in  the 
Church.  One,  derived  ultimately  from  the  ethical  ideal  of  the 
Stoa,  which  conceived  moral  perfection  under  the  form  of 
airddeta,  naturally  wished  to  attribute  this  ideal  airdOeia  to 
Jesus,  as  the  perfect  man.  The  other,  under  the  influence  of 
the  conviction  that,  in  order  to  deliver  men  from  their  weak- 

^  "Certainly ",  remarks  Calvin  (Commentarius  in  Harmoniam  Evan- 
gelicarum,  Mt.  xxvi.  Z7),  "those  who  imagine  that  the  Son  of  God  was 
exempt  from  human  passions,  do  not  truly  and  seriously  acknowledge 
him  to  be  a  man."  "  But  Christ  having  a  human  nature  the  same  for 
substance  that  ours  is,  consisting  both  of  soul  and  body,"  argues  Thomas 
Goodwin  {Works,  Edinburgh  ed.,  1862,  iv.  p.  140),  "therefore  he  must 
needs  have  affections, — even  affections  proper  to  man's  nature  and  truly 
human.  And  these  he  should  have  had.  although  this  human  nature 
had,  from  the  very  first  assumption  of  it,  been  as  glorious  as  it  now  is 
in  heaven."  "  In  what  sense  the  soul  is  capable  of  suffering ",  says  John 
Pearson  {An  Exposition  of  the  Creed,  New  York  ed.,  1843,  p.  288),  "in 
that  he  was  subject  to  animal  passion.  Evil  apprehended  to  come  tor- 
mented his  soul  with  fear,  which  was  as  truly  in  him  in  respect  of 
what  he  was  to  suffer,  as  hope  in  reference  to  the  recompense  of  a 
reward  to  come  after  and  from  his  sufferings.  " 


38  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

nesses,  the  Redeemer  must  assume  and  sanctify  in  his  own 
person  all  human  Trddrj,  as  naturally  was  eager  to  attribute  to 
him  in  its  fulness  every  human  Tra^o?.  Though  in  far  less 
clearly  defined  forms,  and  with  a  complete  shifting  of  their 
bases,  both  tendencies  are  still  operative  in  men's  thought  of 
Jesus.  There  is  a  tendency  in  the  interest  of  the  dignity  of 
his  person  to  minimize,  and  there  is  a  tendency  in  the  interest 
of  the  completeness-  of  his  humanity  to  magnify,  his  affec- 
tional  movements.  The  one  tendency  may  run  some  risk  of 
giving  us  a  somewhat  cold  and  remote  Jesus,  whom  we  can 
scarcely  believe  to  be  able  to  sympathize  with  us  in  all  our 
infirmities.  The  other  may  possibly  be  in  danger  of  offering 
us  a  Jesus  so  crassly  human  as  scarcely  to  command  our  high- 
est reverence.  Between  the  two,  the  figure  of  Jesus  is  liable 
to  take  on  a  certain  vagueness  of  outline,  and  come  to  lack 
definiteness  in  our  thought.  It  may  not  be  without  its  uses, 
therefore,  to  seek  a  starting  point  for  our  conception  of  his 
emotional  life  in  the  comparatively  few^  affectional  movements 
which  are  directly  assigned  to  him  in  the  Gospel  narratives. 
Proceeding  outward  from  these,  we  may  be  able  to  form  a 
more  distinctly  conceived  and  firmly  grounded  idea  of  his 
emotional  life  in  general. 

It  cannot  be  assumed  beforehand,  indeed,  that  all  the  emo- 
tions attributed  to  Jesus  in  the  Evangelical  narratives  are  in- 
tended to  be  ascribed  distinctively  to  his  human  soul.^    Such  is 

'  There  is  some  exaggeration  in  the  remark :  "  The  notices  in  the 
Gospels  of  the  impressions  made  on  his  feelings  by  different  situations 
in  which  he  was  placed,  are  extraordinarily  numerous  "  (James  Stalker, 
Imago  Christi,  1890,  p.  302).  The  Gospel  narratives  are  very  objective, 
and  it  is  only  occasionally  (most  frequently  in  Mark)  that  they  expressly 
notify  the  subjective  movements  of  the  actors  in  the  drama  which  they 
unfold. 

'Direct  mention  of  our  Lord's  human  'soul',  under  that  term  (^ux'J), 
is  not  frequent  in  the  Gospels :  cf.  Swete  on  Mk.  xiv.  34,  "  Though  the 
Gospels  yield  abundant  evidence  of  the  presence  of  human  emotions  in 
our  Lord,  (e.  g.  iii.  5,  vi.  6,  x.  14,  Jno.  vi.  33),  this  direct  mention  of  his 
*  soul '  has  no  parallel  in  them  if  we  except  Jno.  vii.  27 ;  for  in  such  pas- 
sages as  X.  45,  Jno.  X.  II  ^ux^J  's  the  individual  life  (see  Cremer  s.  v.) 
rather  than  the  seat  of  the  emotions."  J.  A.  Alexander  on  Mk.  xiv.  34 
remarks  that  "  my  soul "  there  "  is  not  a  mere  periphrasis  for  the  pronoun, 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 


39 


no  doubt  the  common  view.  And  it  is  not  an  unnatural  view  to 
take  as  we  currently  read  narratives,  which,  whatever  else  they 
contain,  certainly  present  some  dramatization  of  the  human 
experiences  of  our  Lord.*  No  doubt  the  naturalness  of  this 
view  is  its  sufficient  general  justification.  Only,  it  will  be  well 
to  bear  in  mind  that  Jesus  was  definitely  conceived  by  the  Evan- 
gelists as  a  two-natured  person,  and  that  they  made  no  difficul- 
ties with  his  duplex  consciousness.  In  almost  the  same  breath 
they  represent  him  as  declaring  that  he  knows  the  Father 
through  and  through  and,  of  course,  also  all  that  is  in  man, 
and  the  world  which  is  the  theatre  of  his  activities,  and  that 
he  is  ignorant  of  the  time  of  the  occurrence  of  a  simple  earthly 
event  which  concerns  his  own  work  very  closely;  that  he  is 
meek  and  lowly  in  heart  and  yet  at  the  same  time  the  Lord  of 
men  by  their  relations  to  whom  their  destinies  are  determined, 
— "  no  man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  me."  In  the  case  of 
a  Being  whose  subjective  life  is  depicted  as  focusing  in  two 
centers  of  consciousness,  we  may  properly  maintain  some  re- 
serve in  ascribing  distinctively  to  one  or  the  other  of  them 
mental  activities  which,  so  far  as  their  nature  is  concerned, 

(/),  but  refers  his  strange  sensations  more  directly  to  the  inward  seat 
of  feeling  and  emotion."  Cf.,  however,  the  Greek  text  of  Ps.  xlii.  6,  12, 
xlv.  5;  but  also  Winer,  Grammar,  etc.,  Thayer's  tr.,  1872,  p.  156.  The 
term  wvevfj.a  occurs  rather  more  frequently  than  ^pvx"^,  to  designate  the  seat 
of  our  Lord's  emotions:  Mk.  viii.  12;  Jno.  xi.  33,  xiii.  21;  cf.  Mk.  ii.  8; 
Mt.  xxvii.  50;  Jno.  xix.  30. 

*Such  an  attempt  as  that  made  hy  W.  B.  Smith  (Ecce  Deus,  1911, 
p.  loi),  to  explain  away  the  implication  of  our  Lord's  humanity  in  the 
earliest  Gospel  transmission,  is,  of  course,  only  a  "curiosity  of  liter- 
ature." "  Mark ",  says  he,  "  nowhere  uses  of  Jesus  an  expression  which 
suggests  an  impressive  or  even  amiable  human  personality;  or,  indeed, 
any  kind  of  human  personality  whatever."  What  Mark  says  of  Jesus, 
is  what  is  commonly  said  of  God — of  Jehovah.  The  seeming  exceptions 
are  merely  specious.  He  ascribes  "  compassion  "  to  Jesus :  it  is  the  very 
core  of  the  oriental  conception  of  God  that  he  is  merciful.  He 
speaks  of  Jesus  "rebuking"  ( iTinndu  )  or  "snorting  at"  ( ifippifjuiofMi  ) 
men:  these  are  expressions  suitable  to  God  and  employed  in  the  Old 
Testament  of  Jehovah.  He  tells  us  that  Jesus  "loved"  the  rich  young 
man — the  only  ascription  of  love  to  Jesus,  by  the  way,  in  the  Synoptics: 
but  the  rich  young  man  is  just  a  symbol,  the  symbol  of  Israel,  whom 
Jehovah  loves.    And  so  on. 


40  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

might  properly  belong  to  either.  The  embarrassment  in  study- 
ing the  emotional  life  of  Jesus  arising  from  this  cause,  how- 
ever, is  more  theoretical  than  practical.  Some  of  the  emotions 
attributed  to  him  in  the  Evangelical  narrative  are,  in  one  way 
or  another,  expressly  assigned  to  his  human  soul.  Some  of 
them  by  their  very  nature  assign  themselves  to  his  human 
soul.  With  reference  to  the  remainder,  just  because  they 
might  equally  well  be  assigned  to  the  one  nattlre  or  the  other,  it 
may  be  taken  for  granted  that  they  belong  to  the  human 
soul,  if  not  exclusively,  yet  along  with  the  divine  Spirit;  and 
they  may  therefore  very  properly  be  used  to  fill  out  the  picture. 
We  may  thus,  without  serious  danger  of  confusion,  go  simply 
to  the  Evangelical  narrative,  and,  passing  in  review  the  definite 
ascriptions  of  specific  emotions  to  Jesus  in  its  records,  found 
on  them  a  conception  of  his  emotional  life  which  may  serve 
as  a  starting-point  for  a  study  of  this  aspect  of  our  Lord's 
human  manifestation. 

The  establishment  of  this  starting-point  is  the  single  task  of 
this  essay.  No  attempt  will  be  made  in  it  to  round  out  our  view 
of  our  Lord's  emotional  life.  It  will  content  itself  with  an 
attempt  to  ascertain  the  exact  emotions  which  are  expressly  as- 
signed to  him  in  the  Evangelical  narrative,  and  will  leave 
their  mere  collocation  to  convey  its  own  lesson.  We  deceive 
ourselves,  however,  if  their  mere  collocation  does  not  suffice 
solidly  to  ground  certain  very  clear  convictions  as  to  our  Lord's 
humanity,  and  to  determine  the  lines  on  which  our  conception 
of  the  quality  of  his  human  nature  must  be  filled  out. 

L 

The  emotion  which  we  should  naturally  expect  to  find  most 
frequently  attributed  to  that  Jesus  whose  whole  life  was  a  mis- 
sion of  mercy,  and  whose  ministry  was  so  marked  by  deeds  of 
beneficence  that  it  was  summed  up  in  the  memory  of  his  fol- 
lowers as  a  going  through  the  land  "  doing  good  "  (Acts  xi.  38) , 
is  no  doubt  "compassion".  In  point  of  fact,  this  is  the  emotion 
which  is  most  frequently  attributed  to  him.*^     The  term  em- 

"Mt.  XX.  34;  Mk.  i.  41;  Lk,  vii.  13;  Mt.  ix.  36,  xiv.  14,  xv.  32;  Mk. 
vi.  34,  viii.  2.    Cf.  Mk.  ix.  22.    Not  at  all  in  John. 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  41 

ployed  to  express  it®  was  unknown  to  the  Greek  classics,  and 
was  perhaps  a  coinage  of  the  Jewish  dispersion.'''  It  first  ap- 
pears in  common  use  in  this  sense,  indeed,  in  the  Synoptic  Gos- 
pels,® where  it  takes  the  place  of  the  most  inward  classical  word 
of  this  connotation.^  The  Divine  mercy  has  been  defined  as 
that  essential  perfection  in  God  *'  whereby  he  pities  and  re- 
lieves the  miseries  of  his  creatures" :  it  includes,  that  is  to  say, 
the  two  parts  of  an  internal  movement  of  pity  and  an  external 
act  of  beneficence.  It  is  the  internal  movement  of  pity  which 
is  emphasized  when  our  Lord  is  said  to  be  "moved  with  com- 
passion" as  the  term  is  sometimes  excellently  rendered  in  the 
English  versions.  ^^  In  the  appeals  made  to  his  mercy,  a 
more  external  word^^  is  used;  but  it  is  this  more  internal  word 
that  is  employed  to  express  our  Lord's  response  to  these  ap- 
peals: the  petitioners  besought  him  to  take  pity  on  them;  his 
heart  responded  with  a  profound  feeling  of  pity  for  them.    His 

'  liirXayxvltofJ-at:  see  Bleek,  An  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament,  §  33, 
(vol.  i,  p.  75)  ;  J.  A.  Alexander  on  Mk.  i.  41 ;  Plummer  on  Mt.  ix.  36. 
Buttig's  monograph,  De  Emphasi  ffTXayxvitofiai,  we   have   not  seen. 

'  So  Lightfoot,  on  Phil.  i.  8. 

*It  is  found  in  the  LXX  in  this  metaphorical  sense  apparently  only  at 
Prov.  xvii.  5.    Cf.  Swete  on  Mk.  i.  41. 

"  Olicrelpw,  which  does  not  occur  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  and  indeed  only 
once  (Rom.  ix.  15)  in  the  N.  T.  The  adjective,  oIktIp/xcjv  occurs  at  Lk. 
ix.  36  (also  Jas.  v.  11  only  in  N.  T.)  ;  the  noun  olKTipuSs ,  occurs  in 
Paul  (Rom.  xii.  i;  2  Cor.  i.  3;  Phil.  ii.  i;  Col.  iii,  12;  also  Heb.  x.  28 
only). 

"A.  V.  Mk.  i.  41,  vi.  34;  Mt.  ix.  36,  xiv.  14;  R.  V.  Mk.  i.  41;  Mt. 
ix,  36,     XX.  34. 

"'EXe^w  (sometimes,  Aedw),  Mt.  ix.  27,  xv.  22,  xvii.  15,  xx.  30-31; 
Mk.  X.  47-48;  Lk.  xvii.  13,  xviii.  38-39;  cf.  Mk.  v.  19;  Mt.  xviii.  33.  This 
word  also  is  not  found  in  John.  In  Mk.  ix.  22  only  is  a-irXayxfito/xai  used 
in  an  appeal,  and  even  there  its  more  subjective  sense  is  apparent.  On 
eXeos  and  its  synonymy  see  J.  H.  Heinrich  Schmidt,  Synonymik  der 
grieschischen  Sprache  iii.,  1879,  §  143,  pp.  572sq. ;  and  the  excellent 
summary  statement  by  Thayer  in  Thayer-Grimm,  Lexicon  etc.,  sub  voc. 
Ae^w .  G.  Heine,  Synonymik  des  N.  T.-lichen  Griechisch,  898,  p.  82, 
states  it  thus:  "IXeos  O^X)'  ID)  is  the  incHnation  to  succor  the  miserable, 
oiKTipfxAs  the  feeling  of  pain  arising  from  the  miseries  of  others  .  .  . 
olKTipfiSs  is  the  feeling  of  sympathy  dwelling  in  the  heart ;  eXeos  is 
sympathy  expressing  itself  in  act."  l^irXayxvi^ofiai  is  a  term  of  feeling, 
taking  the  place  of    olKTelpu. 


42  ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

compassion  fulfilled  itself  in  the  outward  act;^-  but  what  is 
emphasized  by  the  term  employed  to  express  our  Lord's  re- 
sponse is,  in  accordance  with  its  very  derivation,  the  pro- 
found internal  movement  of  his  emotional  nature. 

This  emotional  movement  was  aroused  in  our  Lord  as  well 
by  the  sight  of  individual  distress  (Mk.  i.  41;  Mt.  xx.  34; 
Lk.  vii.  13)  as  by  the  spectacle  of  man's  universal  misery 
(Mk.  vi.  34,  viii.  2;  Mt.  ix.  36,  xiv.  14,  xv."32).  The  appeal 
of  two  blind  men  that  their  eyes  might  be  opened  (Mt.  xx. 
34),  the  appeal  of  a  leper  for  cleansing  (Mk.  i.  41), — though 
there  may  have  been  circumstances  in  his  case  which  called 
out  Jesus'  reprobation  (verse  43), — set  our  Lord's  heart  throb- 
bing with  pity,  as  did  also  the  mere  sight  of  a  bereaved  widow, 
wailing  by  the  bier  of  her  only  son  as  they  bore  him  forth 
to  burial, ^^  though  no  appeal  was  made  for  relief  (Lk. 
vii.  13).  The  ready  spontaneity  of  Jesus'  pity  is  even  more 
plainly  shown  when  he  intervenes  by  a  great  miracle  to  relieve 
temporary  pangs  of  hunger :  *'  1  have  compassion  on  " — or 
better,  "1  feel  pity  for" — "  the  multitude,  because  they  continue 
with  me  now  three  days,  and  have  nothing  to  eat:  and  if  I 

"W.  Lutgert,  Die  Liebe  im  Neuen  Testament,  1905,  thinks  it  impor- 
tant to  lay  stress  on  this  side  of  our  Lord's  love.  "  In  the  Synoptic 
portrait  of  Christ  the  trait  which  stands  out  most  clearly  is  the  love  of 
Jesus.  He  not  only  commanded  love,  but  first  himself  practiced  it. 
It  is  not  merely  his  thought  but  his  will,  and  not  merely  his  will  but  above 
all  his  deed.  He  therefore  not  only  required  it  but  aroused  it.  It 
expresses  itself  accordingly  not  merely  in  his  word,  but  in  the  first 
instance  in  his  act.  Jesus'  significance  to  the  Synoptists  does  not 
consist  in  his  having  discovered  the  command  of  love,  but  in  his  having 
fulfilled  it.  For  them  Jesus  is  not  a  *  sage '  who  teaches  old  truths  or 
new,  but  a  doer,  who  brings  the  truth  true,  that  is,  acts  it  out"  (p.  53). 
"  His  love  never  remains  a  powerless  wish,  that  is,  an  unsuccessful 
willing,  but  it  always  succeeds.  The  working  of  Jesus  is  described 
in  the  Gospels  as  almighty  love"  (p.  54).  "Since  his  acts  are  really  love, 
they  have  primarily  no  other  purpose  but  to  help.  Their  motive  is 
nothing  but  the  compassion  of  Jesus"  (p.  56).  Accordingly,  Lutgert 
insists,  no  cry  to  Jesus  for  help  was  ever  made  in  vain :  "  Jesus  acts 
precisely  according  to  his  own  command.  Give  to  him  that  asketh  thee  " 

(p.  55). 

** Render,  not  "he  had",  but  "he  felt  compassion",  to  bring  out  the 
emphasis  on  the  "  feeling  ". 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  43 

send  them  away  fasting  to  their  home,  they  will  faint  in  the 
way;  and  some  of  them  are  come  from  far"  (Mk.  viii.  2; 
Mt.  XV.  32), — the  only  occasion  on  which  Jesus  is  recorded  as 
testifying  to  his  own  feeling  of  pity.  It  was  not  merely  the 
physical  ills  of  life,  however, — want  and  disease  and  death, — 
which  called  out  our  Lord's  compassion.  These  ills  were 
rather  looked  upon  by  him  as  themselves  rooted  in  spiritual 
destitution.  And  it  was  this  spiritual  destitution  which  most 
deeply  moved  his  pity.  The  cause  and  the  effects  are  indeed 
very  closely  linked  together  in  the  narrative,  and  it  is  not  always 
easy  to  separate  them.  Thus  we  read  in  Mark  vi.  34:  "And 
he  came  forth  and  saw  a  great  multitude,  and  he  had  com- 
passion on  them  " — better,  "  he  felt  pity  for  them  ", — "  because 
they  were  as  sheep  not  having  a  shepherd,  and  he  taught  them 
many  things."  But  in  the  parallel  passage  in  Mt.  xiv.  14, 
we  read :  ''  And  he  came  forth  and  saw  a  great  multitude, 
and  he  had  compassion  on"  ("felt  pity  for")  "them,  and 
he  healed  their  sick."  We  must  put  the  two  passages 
together  to  get  a  complete  account:  their  fatal  ignorance  of 
spiritual  things,  their  evil  case  under  the  dominion  of  Satan 
in  all  the  effects  of  his  terrible  tyranny,  are  alike  the  object  of 
our  Lord's  compassion. ^^  In  another  passage  (Mt.  ix.  36)  the 
•emphasis  is  thrown  very  distinctly  on  the  spiritual  destitution 
of  the  people  as  the  cause  of  his  compassionate  regard :  "  But 
when  he  saw  the  multitude,  he  was  moved  with  compassion 
for  them,  because  they  were  distressed  and  scattered,  as  sheep 
not  having  a  shepherd."  This  description  of  the  spiritual 
destitution  of  the  people  is  cast  in  very  strong  language.  They 
are  compared  to  sheep  which  have  been  worn  out  and  torn  by 
running  hither  and  thither  through  the  thorns  with  none  to 
direct  them,  and  have  now  fallen  helpless  and  hopeless  to  the 

"J.  A.  Alexander's  note  (on  Mk.  vi.  34,  repeated  verbally  at  Mt.  ix.  36 
and  xiv.  14)  is  therefore  too  exclusive :  "  What  excited  his  divine  and 
liuman  sympathy  was  not,  of  course,  their  numbers  or  their  physical 
■condition,  but  their  spiritual  destitution."  It  was  both.  Cf.  Liitgert,  as 
above,  p.  68 :  "  It  is  a  characteristic  trait  of  Jesus  that  he  feels  pity 
not  merely  for  the  religious,  but  also  for  the  external,  need  of  the  people 
and  that  he  acts  out  of  this  pity.  The  perfection  of  his  love  stands 
precisely  in  this — that  it  is  independent  of  gratitude.     He  helps  to  help." 


44  ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

ground.^'     The  sight  of  their  desperate  plight  awakens  our 
Lord's  pity  and  moves  him  to  provide  the  remedy. 

No  other  term  is  employed  by  the  New  Testament  writers 
directly  to  express  our  Lord's  compassion. ^^  But  we  read 
elsewhere  of  its  manifestation  in  tears  and  sighs. ^'''  The  tears 
which  wet  his  cheeks^®  when,  looking  upon  the  uncontrolled 
grief  of  Mary  and  her  companions,  he  advanced,  with  heart 
swelling  with  indignation  at  the  outrage  of  "death,  to  the  con- 
quest of  the  destroyer  (Jno.  xi.  35),  were  distinctly  tears  of 
sympathy.  Even  more  clearly,  his  own  unrestrained  wailing 
over  Jerusalem  and  its  stubborn  unbelief  was  the  expression 
of  the  most  poignant  pity :  "  O  that  thou  hadst  known  in  this 
day,  even  thou,  the  things  which  belong  unto  peace  "  (Lk. 
xix.  41)!^^  The  sight  of  suffering  drew  tears  from  his 
eyes;  obstinate  unbelief  convulsed  him  with  uncontrollable 
grief.  Similarly  when  a  man  afflicted  with  dumbness  and  deaf- 
ness was  brought  to  him  for  healing  we  are  only  told  that  he 
"  sighed  "  2^  (Mk.  vii.  34)  ;  but  when  the  malignant  unbelief  of 

"  Cf.  Plummer  in  loc:  "A  strong  word  (i<rKv\fx4voi)  is  used  to  ex- 
press their  distress.  .  .  Originally  it  meant  *  flayed  '  or  *  mangled  ',  but 
became  equivalent  to  '  harassed  '  or  *  vexed '  with  weariness  or  worry.  .  . 
'Scattered'  seems  to  suit  shepherdless  sheep,  but  it  may  be  doubted  if 
this  is  the  exact  meaning  of  ippifji^voi .  .  .  .  '  Prostrated '  seems  to  be 
the  meaning  here." 

"  According  to  some  commentators,  <Tv\\viroiJnevos  at  Mk.  iii.  5  expresses 
sympathetic  compassion  (so  e.  g.  Meyer,  Weiss,  Morrison,  J.  B.  Bristow, 
art.  "  Pity "  in  DCG) ;  see  note  36.  Some  commentators  also  read 
i-yadbi,  Mk.  x.  i8,  of  'benevolence';  cf.  /cdXos,  Jno.  x.  11,  14. 

"  Cf.  James  Stalker,  Intcgo  Christi,  1890,  p.  303 .  "  He  not  only  gave 
the  required  help  in  such  cases,  but  gave  it  with  an  amount  of  sympathy 
which  doubled  its  value.  Thus,  he  not  only  raised  Lazarus,  but  wept 
with  his  sisters.  In  curing  a  man  who  was  deaf,  he  sighed  as  he  said 
'  Ephphatha '.    All  his  healing  work  cost  him  feeling." 

*'  AaKpiu,  silent  weeping :  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik  der  griechischen 
Sprache,  I  .1876,  §  26,  p.  470sq. 

"  KXa/w,  audible  wailing:  see  Schmidt,  as  above.  Cf.  Hahn  in  loc: 
"  $K\av<T€v  of  the  loud  and  violent  wailing  called  out  by  an  inner  feeling 
of  pain.  .  .  The  contrast  should  be  observed  between  the  joyful  out- 
cry of  his  disciples,  and  the  inner  feeling  of  Jesus  whose  spirit  saw  the 
true  .situation  of  things,  undeceived  by  appearances." 

"  Srevd^ft),  "pitying  as  I  think",  comments  Fritzsche,  "the  calamities 
of  the  human  race"  and  so  Euth.  Zig.,  Grotius,  Meyer.     On  the  other 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 


45 


the  Pharisees  was  brought  home  to  him  he  "  sighed  from  the 
bottom  of  his  heart  "  (Mk.  viii.  12).^^  '*  Obstinate  sin  ",  com- 
ments Swete  appropriately,  *'  drew  from  Christ  a  deeper  sigh 
than  the  sight  of  suffering  (Lk.  vii.  34  and  cf.  Jno.  xiii.  20),  a 
sigh  in  which  anger  and  sorrow  both  had  a  part  (iii.  4 
note)."  22  -y^g  rmLj,  at  any  rate,  place  the  loud  waiHng  over 
the  stubborn  unbelief  of  Jerusalem  and  the  deep  sighing  over 
the  Pharisees'  determined  opposition  side  by  side  as  exhibitions 
of  the  profound  pain  given  to  our  Lord's  sympathetic  heart,  by 
those  whose  persistent  rejection  of  him  required  at  his  hands 
his  sternest  reprobation.  He  "  sighed  from  the  bottom  of  his 
heart  "  when  he  declared,  *'  There  shall  no  sign  be  given  this 
generation  " ;  he  wailed  aloud  when  he  announced,  ''  The  days 
shall  come  upon  thee  when  thine  enemies  shall  dash  thee  to  the 
ground."  It  hurt  Jesus  to  hand  over  even  hardened  sinners 
to  their  doom. 

It  hurt  Jesus, — because  Jesus'  prime  characteristic  was  love, 
and  love  is  the  foundation  of  compassion.  How  close  to  one 
another  the  two  emotions  of  love  and  compassion  lie,  may  be 
taught  us  by  the  only  instance  in  which  the  emotion  of  love  is 
attributed  to  Jesus  in  the  Synoptics  (Mk.  x.  21).  Here  we 
are  told  that  Jesus,  looking  upon  the  rich  young  ruler,  "loved"^^ 
him,  and  said  to  him,  "  One  thing  thou  lackest."  It  is  not  the 
"  love  of  complacency  "  which  is  intended,  but  the  "  love  of 
benevolence  " ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  the  love,  not  so  much  that 
finds  good,  as  that  intends  good, — though  we  may  no 
doubt  allow  that  "  love  of  compassion  is  never  " — let  us  rather 
say,  "  seldom  " — "  absolutely  separated  from  love  of  approba- 
tion "  ;^*  that  is  to  say,  there  is  ordinarily  some  good  to  be  found 

hand,  DeWette,  Weiss,  Lagrange  think  the  sigh,  a  sigh  not  of  sympathy 
but  of  prayer  (Rom.  viii.  23,  26). 

''  'Ava(TT€vd^u,  intensive  form,  here  only  in  the  N.  T.,  but  found  in  LXX . 
"  The  Lord's  human  spirit ",  comments  Swete,  "  was  stirred  to  its  depths." 

^  "  In  both  cases  ",  Swete  (on  Mk.  vii.  34)  suggests,  "  perhaps  the  vast 
difficulty  and  long  delays  of  the  remedial  work  were  borne  in  upon  our 
Lord's  human  spirit  in  an  especial  manner." 

^^'Hydir-nae.  On  the  words  for  "love"  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik,  etc. 
III.  1879;  §  136,  pp.  474sq;  dyairdbf,  pp.  482sq. 

** Morrison  in  he.  Cf.  Lutgert,  as  cited,  p.  59:  "According  to  the 
Gospels,  therefore,  Jesus  loves  the  needy.     When  Wernle  maintains  that 


46  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

already  in  those  upon  whom  we  fix  our  benevolent  regard.  The 
heart  of  our  Saviour  turned  yearningly  to  the  rich  young  man 
and  longed  to  do  him  good;  and  this  is  an  emotion,  we  say, 
which,  especially  in  the  circumstances  depicted,  is  not  far  from 
simple  compassion.^'* 

It  is  characteristic  of  John's  Gospel  that  it  goes  with  simple 
directness  always  to  the  bottom  of  things.  Love  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  compassion.  And  love  is  attributed  to  Jesus  only 
once  in  the  Synoptics,  but  compassion  often;  while  with  John  the 
contrary  is  true — compassion  is  attributed  to  Jesus  not  even 
once,  but  love  often.  This  love  is  commonly  the  love  of  com- 
passion, or,  rather,  let  us  broaden  it  now  and  say,  the  love  of 

the  Evangelists  have  shown  us  a  Christ  who  leads  his  life  '  in  joy  over 
nature  and  good  men'  (p.  63),  this  conception  of  Christ  contradicts  the 
earnestness  of  the  Gospels  through  and  through :  it  is  precisely  the  charac- 
teristic of  the  Gospels  that  the  motive  of  Jesus'  love  according  to  them, 
so  far  as  it  lies  in  men,  is  in  the  first  instance  negative.  The  people 
called  out  his  compassion  (Mt.  ix.  36).  Jesus'  love  does  not  have  the 
character  of  admiration,  but  simply  of  compassion.  It  is  not  delight,  but 
deed,  gift,  help.  It  required  therefore  a  needy  recipient.  But  the  love  of 
Jesus  to  the  people  has  also  a  positive  motive,  which  is,  however,  no- 
where expressed, — that  is,  pleasure  in  their  good."  Cf.  what  Liitgert 
says,  pp.  92sq.,  of  the  coexistence  with  Jesus'  love  of  hate,  directed  to 
all  that  is  evil  in  men. 

"  The  negative  side  of  the  exposition  is  stated  very  well  by  Wohl- 
enberg  in  loc:  "  It  would  contradict  fundamental  elements  of  Jesus' 
preaching  if  those  were  right  who  hold  that  Jesus  was  inwardly  of  the 
young  man's  mind,  and,  looking  upon  him,  conceived  an  affection  for  him, 
precisely  because  he  had  already  made  so  much  progress  in  keeping  the 
divine  commandments,  and  showed  himself  burning  with  enthusiasm 
for  undertaking  more.  And  how  would  this  harmonize  with  what  is 
afterwards  said  in  verses  23  and  24sq.  "...  The  positive  side  is  given 
excellently  by  J.  A.  Alexander  in  loc:  "Most  probably,  love,  as  in  many 
other  places,  here  denotes  not  moral  approbation,  nor  affection  founded 
upon  anything  belonging  to  the  object,  but  a  sovereign  and  gratuitous 
compassion,  such  as  leads  to  every  act  of  mercy  on  God's  part  (compare 
Jno.  iii.  16;  Gal.  ii.  20;  Eph.  ii.  4;  i  Jno.  iv.  10,  19).  The  sense  will  then 
be,  not  that  Jesus  loved  him  on  account  of  what  he  said,  or  what  he  was, 
or  what  he  did,  but  that,  having  purposes  of  mercy  towards  him,  he 
proceeded  to  unmask  him  to  himself,  and  to  show  him  how  entirely 
groundless,  although  probably  sincere,  was  his  claim  to  have  habitually 
kept  the  law.  The  Saviour's  love  is  then  mentioned,  not  as  the  effect 
of  what  precedes,  but  as  the  ground  or  motive  of  what  follows." 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  47 

benevolence ;  but  sometimes  it  is  the  love  of  sheer  delight  in  its 
object.  Love  to  God  is,  of  course,  the  love  of  pure  compla- 
cency. We  are  surprised  to  note  that  Jesus'  love  to  God  is 
only  once  explicitly  mentioned  (Jno.  xiv.  31);  but  in  this 
single  mention  it  is  set  before  us  as  the  motive  of  his  entire 
saving  work  and  particularly  of  his  offering  of  himself  up. 
The  time  of  his  offering  is  at  hand,  and  Jesus  explains :  ''  I 
will  no  more  speak  much  with  you,  for  the  prince  of  this 
world  cometh;  and  he  hath  nothing  in  me;  but  [I  yield  myself 
to  him]  that  the  world  may  know  that  I  love  the  Father,  and 
as  the  Father  gave  me  commandment,  even  so  I  do."  ^^  The 
motive  of  Jesus'  earthly  life  and  death  is  more  commonly  pre- 
sented as  love  for  sinful  men;  here  it  is  presented  as  loving 
obedience  to  God.  He  had  come  to  do  the  will  of  the  Father ; 
and  because  he  loved  the  Father,  his  will  he  will  do,  up  to  the 
bitter  end.  He  declares  his  purpose  to  be,  under  the  impulse 
of  love,  *'  obedience  up  to  death,  yea,  the  death  of  the  cross." 

The  love  for  man  which  moved  Jesus  to  come  to  his  succor 
in  his  sin  and  misery  was,  of  course,  the  love  of  benevolence. 
It  finds  its  culminating  expression  in  the  great  words  of  Jno. 
XV.  13  :  "  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this,  that  a  man  lay 
down  his  life  for  his  friends :  ye  are  my  friends,  if  ye  do  the 
things  which  I  command  you  "^"^ — rather  an  illuminating  defin- 
ition of  '  friends  ',  by  the  way,  especially  when  it  is  followed 
by :  "  Ye  did  not  choose  me  but  I  chose  you  and  appointed 
you  that  ye  should  go  and  bear  fruit."  "  Friends  ",  it  is  clear,, 
in  this  definition,  are  rather  those  who  are  loved  than  those  who 
love.  This  culminating  expression  of  his  love  for  his  own,  by 
which  he  was  sustained  in  his  great  mission  of  humiliation  for 
them,  is  supported,  however,  by  repeated  declarations  of  it  in 
the  immediate  and  wider  context.  In  the  immediately  preceding 
verses,  for  example,  it  is  urged  as  the  motive  and  norm  of  the 
love — spring  of  obedience — which  he  seeks  from  his  disciples : 
"  Herein  in  my  Father  glorified,  that  ye  bear  much  fruit ;  and 
so  shall  ye  be  my  disciples.    Even  as  my  Father  hath  loved  me, 

^'For  the  construction,  see  Westcott  in  loc.     The  term  is,  of  course,. 
"  The  term  is  dydwr] — although  its  correlative  is  oi  <pC\ot. 


48  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

I  also  have  loved  you:  abide  ye  in  my  love.  If  ye  keep  my 
commandments  ye  shall  abide  in  my  love ;  even  as  I  have  kept 
my  Father's  commandments,  and  abide  in  his  love.  These 
things  have  I  spoken  unto  you,  that  my  joy  may  be  in  you  and 
that  your  joy  may  be  fulfilled.  This  is  my  commandment,  that 
ye  love  one  another,  even  as  I  have  loved  you  "  (Jno.  xv.  8-12). 
As  his  love  to  the  Father  was  the  source  of  his  obedience 
to  the  Father,  and  the  living  spring  of  his  faithfulness  to  the 
work  which  had  been  committed  to  him,  ►so  he  declares  that 
the  love  of  his  followers  to  him,  imitating  and  reproducing 
his  love  to  them,  is  to  be  the  source  of  their  obedience  to  him, 
and  through  that,  of  all  the  good  that  can  come  to  human 
beings,  including,  as  the  highest  reach  of  social  perfection, 
their  love  for  one  another.  Self-sacrificing  love  is  thus 
made  the  essence  of  the  Christian  life,  and  is  referred 
for  its  incentive  to  the  self-sacrificing  love  of  Christ 
himself:  Christ's  followers  are  to  "have  the  same  mind 
in  them  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus."  The  posses- 
sive pronouns  throughout  this  passage — "  abide  in  my  love  ", 
"  in  my  love  ",  "  in  his  (the  Father's)  love  " — are  all  subjec- 
tive :^^  so  that  throughout  the  whole,  it  is  the  love  which  Christ 
bears  his  people  which  is  kept  in  prominent  view  as  the  im- 
pulse and  standard  of  the  love  he  asks  from  his  people.  This 
love  had  already  been  adverted  to  more  than  once  in  the 
wider  context  (xiii.  i,  i,  34,  xiv.  21)  in  the  same  spirit  in 
which  it  is  here  spoken  of.  Its  greatness  is  celebrated :  he  not 
only  "  loved  his  own  which  were  in  the  world  ",  but  "  loved 
them  utterly  "  (xiii.  i).^^    It  is  presented  as  the  model  for  the 

"Cf.  Meyer  in  loc:  "The  6.y6.ir-n  v  ifi-fi  is  not  love  to  me,  but:  my 
love  to  you,  as  is  clear  from  iiydvijca  vfids  and  from  the  analogy  of 
ij  x«/>*  "h  ^Ati>  verse  11,  cf.  verses  12,  13."  This  instance  carries  the 
others  with  it.  Westcott,  if  we  understand  him,  wishes  to  take  this 
phrase  undifferentiatedly  as  including  both  the  subjective  and  objective 
senses :  "  The  meaning  of  the  words  cannot  be  limited  to  the  idea  of 
Christ's  love  for  men,  or  to  that  of  man's  love  for  Christ :  they  describe 
the  absolute  love  which  is  manifested  in  these  two  ways,  the  love  which 
perfectly  corresponds  with  Christ's  being."  "  His  love ",  he  apparently 
takes  objectively,  of  love  to  God. 

"Westcott:  "to  the  uttermost":  so  Godet,  etc.  Liitgert,  as  cited,  p. 
154  note:  "els   riXos   means,  not  'until  the  end'  but  'to  the  utmost',  abso- 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  49 

imitation  of  those  who  would  live  a  Christian  life  on  earth: 
"  even  as  I  have  loved  you  "  (xiii.  34).  It  is  propounded  as 
the  Christian's  greatest  reward :  "  and  I  will  love  him  and  man- 
ifest myself  unto  him  "  (xiv.  21). 

The  emotion  of  love  as  attributed  to  Jesus  in  the  narrative 
of  John  is  not  confined,  however,  to  these  great  movements — 
his  love  to  his  Father  which  impelled  him  to  fulfil  all  his 
Father's  will  in  the  great  work  of  redemption  and  his  love 
for  those  whom,  in  fulfilment  of  his  Father's  will,  he  had 
chosen  to  be  the  recipients  of  his  saving  mercy,  laying  down 
his  life  for  them.  There  are  attributed  to  him  also  those 
common  movements  of  affection  which  bind  man  to  man  in  the 
ties  of  friendship.  We  hear  of  particular  individuals  whom 
"Jesus  loved  ",  the  meaning  obviously  being  that  his  heart 
knit  itself  to  theirs  in  a  simple  human  fondness.  The  term 
employed  to  express  this  friendship  is  prevailingly  that  high 
term  which  designates  a  love  that  is  grounded  in  admiration 
and  fulfils  itself  in  esteem  ;^^  but  the  term  which  carries  with  it 
only  the  notion  of  personal  inclination  and  delight  is  not 
shunned. ^^  We  are  given  to  understand  that  there  was  a  par- 
ticular one  of  our  Lord's  most  intimate  circle  of  disciples  on 
whom  he  especially  poured  out  his  personal  affection.  This 
disciple  came  to  be  known,  as,  by  way  of  eminence,  "  the  dis- 
ciple whom  Jesus  loved,"  though  there  are  subtle  suggestions 

lutely;  cf.  i  Thess.  ii.  16;  Lk.  xviii,  5,  and  besides  the  parallels  from 
Hermas  adduced  by  Julicher,  Gleichnisreden  Jesu,  II.  p.  282,  also  Barnabas 
iv.  6,  ets  tAoj  6.ir(h\e<Tav  ainri^v  and  xix,  II,  els  tAos  /Lcwrijo'etj  rbv  iromjpbv. 
Therefore  John  too  has  the  conception  of  complete,  purified  love." 
In  the  text  he  had  written:  "The  word  xiii.  i  is  a  parallel  to  xii.  28. 
According  to  the  one  word  the  life  of  Jesus  hitherto  is  described  as  a 
glorification  of  God,  according  to  the  other  as  love  to  his  people.  The 
love  which  he  practiced  in  his  death,  the  Apostle  places  by  the  side 
of  the  love  which  he  had  hitherto  practiced:  on  the  other  hand  it  is  dis- 
tinguished from  his  love  hitherto  as  an  especial,  new  manifestation  of 
love.  By  the  love  which  he  practiced  in  his  death,  he  loved  them  to  the 
uttermost.  Now  his  love  is  become  an  absolute,  purified  love,  for  his 
love  first  becomes  absolute  when  he  gives  his  soul.  The  death  of  Jesus 
serves  therefore  for  John  not  only  as  the  last  and  highest  proof  of  his 
love,  but  as  its  perfecting." 

^  'AyaTdu:    xi.  5,  xiii.  23,  xix.  26,  xxi.  7,  20.     Cf.  Mk.  x.  21. 

^  *i\^w  :  xi.  3,  36,  XX.  2. 


50  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

that  the  phrase  must  not  be  taken  in  too  exclusive  a  sense. ^^ 
Both  terms,  the  more  elevated  and  the  more  intimate,  are 
employed  to  express  Jesus'  love  for  him.^^  The  love  of  Jesus 
for  the  household  at  Bethany  and  especially  for  Lazarus,  is 
also  expressly  intimated  to  us,  and  it  also  by  both  terms, — 
though  the  more  intimate  one  is  tactfully  confined  to  his  affec- 
tion for  Lazarus  himself.  The  message  v^hich  the  sisters 
sent  Jesus  is  couched  in  the  language  of  the  warmest  personal 
attachment :  "  Behold,  he  whom  thou  lovest  is  sick  " ;  and 
the  sight  of  Jesus'  tears  calls  from  the  witnessing  Jews  an  ex- 
clamation which  recognizes  in  him  the  tenderest  personal  feel- 
ing :  "  Behold,  how  he  loved  him !  "  But  when  the  Evangelist 
widens  Jesus'  affection  to  embrace  the  sisters  also,  he  instinc- 
tively lifts  the  term  employed  to  the  more  deferential  expres- 
sion of  friendship :  "  Now  Jesus  loved  Martha,  and  her  sister, 
and  Lazarus."  Jesus'  affection  for  Mary  and  Martha,  while 
deep  and  close,  had  nothing  in  it  of  an  amatory  nature,  and 
the  change  in  the  term  avoids  all  possibility  of  such  a  miscon- 
ception.^^ Meanwhile,  we  perceive  our  Lord  the  subject  of  those 
natural  movements  of  affection  which  bind  the  members  of 
society  together  in  bonds  of  close  fellowship.  He  was  as  far 
as  possible  from  insensibility  to  the  pleasures  of  social  inter- 
course (cf.  Mt.  xi.  19)  and  the  charms  of  personal  attractive- 
ness. He  had  his  mission  to  perform,  and  he  chose  his  ser- 
vants with  a  view  to  the  performance  of  his  mission.  The  rela- 
tions of  the  flesh  gave  way  in  his  heart  to  the  relations  of  the 
spirit :  "  whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in 
heaven,  he  is  my  brother,  and  sister,  and  mother"   (Mt.  xii. 

"  Jno.  XX.  2,  not  "  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved  ",  but  "  the  other  disciple 
whom  Jesus  loved."  Jesus  loved  both  Peter  and  John.  Cf.  Westcott  in 
loc.  Hence  Westcott  says  (on  xiii.  23)  that  the  phrase  "the  disciple 
whom  Jesus  loved",  "marks  an  acknowledgment  of  love  and  not  an 
exclusive  enjoyment  of  love." 

'"Ayavdu:  xiii,  23,  xix.  26,  xxi.  7,  20;<pL\iu:  xx.  2. 

**  Cf.  Meyer  on  Jno.  xi.  5 :  "  'ftydva  :  an  expression  chosen  with  deli- 
cate tenderness  (the  more  sensuous  <pi.\eiu  is  not  again  used  as  in  verse 
4),  because  the  sisters  are  mentioned":  and  Westcott:  "The  Evangelist 
describes  the  Lord's  aflFection  for  this  family  as  that  of  moral  choice 
{ijydTa  .  .)." 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  51 

50)  and  it  is  "  those  who  do  the  things  which  he  commands 
them  "  whom  he  calls  his  "  friends  "  (Jno.  xv.  14).  But  he 
had  also  the  companions  of  his  human  heart :  those  to  whom 
his  affections  turned  in  a  purely  human  attachment.  His 
heart  was  open  and  readily  responded  to  the  delights  of 
human  association,  and  bound  itself  to  others  in  a  happy  fel~ 
lowship.^^ 

II. 

The  moral  sense  is  not  a  mere  faculty  of  discrimination  be- 
tween the  qualities  which  we  call  right  and  wrong,  which  ex- 
hausts itself  in  their  perception  as  different.  The  judgments  it 
passes  are  not  merely  intellectual,  but  what  we  call  moral 
judgments;  that  is  to  say,  they  involve  approval  and  disap- 
proval according  to  the  qualities  perceived.  It  would  be 
impossible,  therefore,  for  a  moral  being  to  stand  in  the  presence 
of  perceived  wrong  indifferent  and  unmoved.  Precisely  what 
we  mean  by  a  moral  being  is  a  being  perceptive  of  the  dif- 
ference between  right  and  wrong  and  reacting  appropriately  to 
right  and  wrong  perceived  as  such.  The  emotions  of  indignation 
and  anger  belong  therefore  to  the  very  self-expression  of  a 
moral  being  as  such  and  cannot  be  lacking  to  him  in  the  pres- 
ence of  wrong.  We  should  know,  accordingly,  without  in- 
struction that  Jesus,  living  in  the  conditions  of  this  earthly  life 
under  the  curse  of  sin,  could  not  fail  to  be  the  subject  of  the 
whole  series  of  angry  emotions,  and  we  are  not  surprised  that 
even  in  the  brief  and  broken  narratives  of  his  life-experiences 
which  have  been  given  to  us,  there  have  been  preserved  records 
of  the  manifestation  in  word  and  act  of  not  a  few  of  them. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  in  passing  that  it  is  especially  in  the 
Gospel  of  Mark,  which  rapid  and  objective  as  it  is  in  its  nar- 
rative, is  the  channel  through  which  has  been  preserved  to  us 
a  large  part  of  the  most  intimate  of  the  details  concerning  our 
Lord's  demeanor  and  traits  which  have  come  down  to  us,  that 
we  find  these  records. 

It  is  Mark,  for  instance,  who  tells  us  explicitly  (iii.  5)  that 
the  insensibility  of  the  Jews  to  human  suffering  exhibited  in 

^'Cf.  Mt.  xi.  19,  Lk.  vii.  34  (xii.  4),  Jno.  xi.  11  (xv.  14,  15). 


52  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

a  tendency  to  put  ritual  integrity  above  humanity,  filled  Jesus 
with  indignant  anger.  A  man  whose  hand  had  withered,  met 
with  in  the  synagogue  one  Sabbath,  afforded  a  sort  of  test- 
case.  The  Jews  treated  it  as  such  and  "  watched  Jesus  whether 
he  would  heal  him  on  the  Sabbath  day,  that  they  might  accuse 
him."  Jesus  accepted  the  challenge.  Commanding  the  man 
to  "  rise  in  the  midst  "  of  the  assemblage,  he  put  to  them 
the  searching  question,  generalizing  the  whole  case :  "  Is  it  law- 
ful to  do  good  or  to  do  evil  on  the  Sabbath,  to  save  life  or  to 
kill?  "  "  But  ",  says  the  narrative,  "  they  kept  silent."  Then 
Jesus*  anger  rose :  *'  he  looked  around  at  them  with  anger, 
being  grieved  at  the  hardness  of  their  heart."  What  is  meant 
is,  not  that  his  anger  was  modified  by  grief,  his  reprobation 
of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts  was  mingled  with  a  sort  of 
sympathy  for  men  sunk  in  such  a  miserable  condition.  What 
is  meant  is  simply  that  the  spectacle  of  their  hardness  of  heart 
produced  in  him  the  deepest  dissatisfaction,  which  passed 
into  angry  resentment. ^^  Thus  the  fundamental  psychology  of 
anger  is  curiously  illustrated  by  this  account ;  for  anger  always 
has  pain  at  its  root,  and  is  a  reaction  of  the  soul  against  what 
gives  it  discomfort.^'''  The  hardness  of  the  Jews'  heart,  vividly 
realized,  hurt  Jesus;  and  his  anger  rose  in  repulsion  of  the 
cause  of  his  pain.  There  are  thus  two  movements  of  feeling 
brought  before  us  here.  There  is  the  pain  which  the  gross 
manifestation  of  the  hardness  of  heart  of  the  Jews  inflicted  on 
Jesus.  And  there  is  the  strong  reaction  of  indignation  which 
sprang  out  of  this  pain.  The  term  by  which  the  former  feel- 
ing is  expressed  has  at  its  basis  the  simple  idea  of  pain,  and  is 

**  The  preposition  in  the  participle  cvWvirod/jLevos  merely  emphasizes  the 
inwardness  of  the  emotion  (Thayer-Grimm,  Lexicon,  etc.  sub  voc.  dv, 
ii.  4).  Cf.  Fritsche  in  loc:  "Beza  and  Rosenmiiller  have  properly  seen 
that  the  preposition  (nJv  is  not  without  force.  But  their  interpretation: 
'when  he  had  looked  indignantly  about  him  at  the  same  time  grieving, 
etc'  would  required  Ma  \viro6fievoi  and  does  not  render  the  force  of 
<r  u  X  XuiroiJ/Ltf ws .  We  have  no  doubt,  therefore,  that  the  preposition  o-jJi/, 
should  be  referred  to  the  mind  of  Jesus,  i.  e.,  '  zvhen  he  had  looked 
about  him  with  anger,  grieving  in  his  mind    ...       he  said ' " 

" "  It  is "  says  James  Denney  (DCG.,  I.  p.  60)  justly,  "  the  vehement 
repulsion  of  that  which  hurts." 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  53 

used  in  the  broadest  way  of  every  kind  of  pain,  whether  phys- 
ical or  mental,  emphasizing,  however,  the  sensation  itself, 
rather  than  its  expression.^®  It  is  employed  here  appropriately, 
in  a  form  which  throws  an  emphasis  on  the  inwardness  of  the 
feeling,  of  the  discomfort  of  heart  produced  in  Jesus  by  the 
sight  of  man's  inhumanity  to  man.  The  expression  of  this 
discomfort  was  in  the  angry  look  which  he  swept  over  the 
unsympathetic  assemblage.  It  is  not  intimated  that  the  pain 
was  abiding,  the  anger  evanescent.  The  glance  in  which  the 
anger  was  manifested  is  represented  as  fleeting  in  contrast 
with  the  pain  of  which  the  anger  was  the  expression.  But  the 
term  used  for  this  anger  is  just  the  term  for  abiding  resent- 
ment, set  on  vengeance.  ^^  Precisely  what  is  ascribed  to  Jesus, 
then,  in  this  passage  is  that  indignation  at  wrong,  perceived  as 
such,  wishing  and  intending  punishment  to  the  wrong-doer, 
which  forms  the  core  of  what  we  call  vindicatory  justice.^^ 

^*See  Schmidt,  Synonytnik  etc.  II,  1878,  §  83.14,  pp.  588sq.  Trench, 
Synonyms  of  the  New  Testament''  1871,  p.  224:  "This  XjJm?,  unlike  the 
grief  which  the  three  following  words  [  irevddu),  (pprfv^u,  kStttu  ]  express, 
a  man  may  so  entertain  in  the  deep  of  his  heart,  that  there  shall  be  no 
outward  manifestation  of  it,  unless  he  himself  be  pleased  to  reveal  it 
(Rom.  ix.  2)." 

^See  Schmidt,  as  above  III,  1879,  §  142:  dpy^  is  "wrath  (Zorn)  as 
it  is  directed  to  punishment  or  vengeance"  (p.  512)  ;  "Spyi^  stands  in 
closer  relation  to  the  vengeance  which  is  to  be  inflicted  than  dv/iSs  "  (p. 
553)  >  "  it  accordingly  can  be  nothing  else  than  the  violently  outbreaking 
natural  impulse,  uncontrolled  by  the  reason,  which  we  call  by  the  word 
*  wrath '  (Zorn)  ;  and  the  idea  that  such  an  impulse  seeks  its  end,  and 
therefore  the  thought  of  vengeance  or  punishment  which  this  impulse  seeks 
to  wreak  on  the  guilty  one,  lies  close"  (p.  555).  Cf.  Trench,  p.  124.  Liit- 
gert,  as  cited,  pp.  96,  99,  is  careful  to  point  out  that  Jesus'  anger  is  never 
personal,  and  never  passes  into  revengeful  feelings  on  his  own  behalf. 

*^  Cf .  "  the  wrath  of  the  Lamb  "  Rev.  vi.  16.  Thomas  Goodwin  ( Works, 
IV.  p.  144)  wishes  us  to  understand  that  when  such  emotional  movements 
are  attributed  to  the  Exalted  Christ,  they  have  their  full  quality  as  human 
emotions,  affecting  the  whole  Christ  body  as  well  as  spirit,  "  Therefore, 
whenas  we  read  of  the  'wrath  of  the  Lamb',  as  Rev.  vi.  16,  namely, 
against  his  enemies,  as  here  of  his  pity  and  compassion  towards  his 
friends  and  members,  why  should  this  be  attributed  only  to  his  deity,  which 
is  not  capable  of  wrath,  or  to  his  soul  and  spirit  only?  And  why  may  it 
not  be  thought  he  is  truly  angry  as  a  man,  in  the  whole  man,  and  so  with 
such  a  wrath  as  his  body  is  afflicted  with,  as  well  as  that  he  is  wrathful  in 


I 


54  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

This  is  a  necessary  reaction  of  every  moral  being  against  per- 
ceived wrong. 

On  another  occasion  Mark  (x.  14)  pictures  Jesus  to  us  as 
moved  by  a  much  lighter  form  of  the  emotion  of  anger.  His 
disciples, — doubtless  with  a  view  to  protecting  him  from  need- 
less drafts  upon  his  time  and  strength, — interfered  with  cer- 
tain parents,  who  were  bringing  to  him  their  babies  (Lk. 
xviii.  15)  *' that  he  should  touch  them".  Jesus  saw  their 
action,  and,  we  are  told,  "  was  moved  with  indignation."  The 
term  employed  here^^  expresses,  originally,  physical  (such,  for 
example,  as  is  felt  by  a  teething  child),  and  then  mental  (Mt. 
XX.  24,  xxi.  15,  xxvi.  8;  Mk.  x.  41,  xiv.  4;  Lk.  xiii.  14,  cf.  2 
Cor.  vii.  11)"  irritation  ".  Jesus  was  "  irritated  ",  or  perhaps 
we  may  better  render,  was  "  annoyed  ",  "  vexed  ",  at  his  disci- 
ples. And  (so  the  term  also  suggests)  he  showed  his  annoy- 
ance,— whether  by  gesture  or  tone  or  the  mere  shortness  of 
his  speech :  "  Let  the  children  come  to  me ;  forbid  them  not !"  ^^ 
Thus  we  see  Jesus  as  he  reacts  with  anger  at  the  spectacle 
of  inhumanity,  so  reacting  with  irritation  at  the  spectacle  of 
blundering  misunderstanding,  however  well-meant. 

Yet  another  phase  of  angry  emotion  is  ascribed  to  Jesus  by 
Mark,  but  in  this  case  not  by  Mark  alone.  Mark  (xiv.  3) 
tells  us  that  on  healing  a  leper,  Matthew  (ix.  30)  that  on 
healing  two  blind  men,  Jesus  "  straitly  ",  "  strictly  ",  "  sternly  ", 
"  charged  "  them, — as  our  English  versions  struggle  with  the 
term,  in  an  attempt  to  make  it  describe  merely  the  tone  and 
manner  of  his  injunction  to  the  beneficiaries  of  his  healing 
power,  not  to  tell  of  the  cures  wrought  upon  them.  This  term,*^ 

his  soul  only,  seeing  he  hath  taken  up  our  whole  nature,  on  purpose  to 
subserve  his  divine  nature  in  all  the  executions  of  it?" 

"  ' AyavaKT^u:  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik  etc.  Ill,  1879,  pp.  360-562 : 
'AyavaKTcTv  and  iyavdKTij<ris  designate,  to  wit,  the  displeasure  (Unwillen) 
which  we  feel  at  an  act  in  which  we  see  a  wrong  (Unrecht)  or  which 
outrages  our  human  sentiment  and  feeling"  (p.  561).  "Jesus"  com- 
ments Lagrange  in  loc.  "was  irritated  by  their  hardness." 

^'Swete  in  loc:  "We  hear  the  Lord's  indignant  call,  as  it  startles  the 
disciples  in  the  act  of  dismissing  the  party." 

*'  'Efippifidofmi  :  see  especially  the  detailed  discussion  of  this  word 
by  Fr.  Gumlich  in  the  Theologische  Studien  und  Kritiken,  1862,  pp.  260- 
269.    "  It  is,  now,  exegetically  certain  that  Jesus  here  (Jno.  xi.  33)  was 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  55 

however,  does  not  seem  to  mean,  in  its  ordinary  usage,  to 
"  charge ",  to  "  enjoin ",  however  straitly  or  strictly,  but 
simply  to  "  be  angry  at ",  or,  since  it  commonly  implies 
that  the  anger  is  great,  to  "  be  enraged  with  ",  or,  perhaps 
better  still,  since  it  usually  intimates  that  the  anger  is 
expressed  by  audible  signs,  to  "  rage  against ".  If  we  are 
to  take  it  in  its  customary  sense,  therefore,  what  we  are 
really  told  in  these  passages  is  that  Jesus,  **  when  he  had  raged 
against  the  leper,  sent  him  away  " ;  that  "  he  raged  against 
the  blind  men,  saying,  'See  that  no  one  know  it!'"  If 
this  rage  is  to  be  supposed  (with  our  English  versions)  to 
have  expressed  itself  only  in  the  words  recorded,  the  meaning 
would  not  be  far  removed  from  that  of  the  English  word 
"bluster"  in  its  somewhat  rare  transitive  use,  as,  for  example, 
when  an  old  author  writes :  "He  meant  to  bluster  all  princes 
into  perfect  obedience."  ^*  The  implication  of  boisterousness, 
and  indeed  of  empty  noise,  which  attends  the  English  word, 
however,  is  quite  lacking  from  the  Greek,  the  rage  expressed  by 
which  is  always  thought  of  as  very  real.  What  it  has  in  com- 
mon with  "bluster  "  is  thus  merely  its  strong  minatory  import. 
The  Vulgate  Latin  accordingly  cuts  the  knot  by  rendering  it 
simply  "  threatened ",  and  is  naturally  followed  in  this  by 

angry.  Only  this,  open  and  vehement  anger,  and  no  other  meaning  be- 
longs philologically  tOe/x/3pi/ia<r^oi"(p.  260,  opening  the  discussion),  "From 
what  has  been  said,  it  is  sufficiently  clear  that,  i)  ^pifua,  just  like  fremo 
always  expresses,  transferred  to  man,  nothing  but  the  active  affection  of 
anger,  never  *  a  general  [mental  movement]',  least  of  all  '  sorrow ';  2)  that 
moreover  /Spf/*??  and  its  frequentatively  heightened  and  yet  at  the  same 
l^ime  interiorizing  (  ^i' )  intensive  iix^pifiaadai,  expresses  only  a  strong, 
or  the  strongest  degree  of  wrath,  which,  precisely  on  account  of  this 
strength  being  incapable  of  being  held  in,  breaks  out  externally,  but  still 
gives  vent  to  itself  rather  in  uncontrollable  sound  than  words  "  (pp.  265-6, 
closing  the  discussion).  Cf.  p.  209:  "''EfiPpifj.dffdai  designates  primarily 
a  single  emotion,  and  this  on^  is  a  vehement  ebullition  of  his  anger,  a 
real  infremere."  Cf ,  Meyer  on  Jno.  xi,  33 :  "  The  words  ppifidofMi 
and  in^ pifidofiai  are  never  used  otherwise  than  of  hot  anger  in  the 
Classics,  the  Septuagint,  and  the  New  Testament  (Mt.  ix.  30;  Mk.  i.  43, 
xiv.  5),  save  when  they  denote  snorting  or  growling  proper  (Aeschyl, 
Sept.  461,  Lucean,  Necyom.  20." 

** Fuller  (Webster),  about  1601,  cited  in  The  Oxford  Dictionary  of  the 
English  Language,  I.  951,  where  other  citations  also  are  given. 


56  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

those  English  versions  (Wycliflfe,  Rheims)  which  depend  on 
it."**  Certainly  Jesus  is  represented  here  as  taking  up  a  men- 
acing attitude,  and  threatening  words  are  placed  on  his  lips: 
"  See  that  thou  say  nothing  to  any  man,"  "  See  that  no  one 
know  it  " — a  form  of  speech  which  always  conveys  a  threat."*^ 
But  "  threaten  "  can  scarcely  be  accepted  as  an  adequate  render- 
ing of  the  term  whether  in  itself  or  in  these  contexts.  When 
Matthew  tells  us  "And  he  was  enraged  at  them,  saying  .  .  ." 
the  rage  may  no  doubt  be  thought  to  find  its  outlet  in  the  threat- 
ening words  which  follow  :^^  but  the  implication  of  Mark  is 
different :  "  And  raging  at  him  ",  or  ''  having  raged  at  him  " 
— "  he  straightway  sent  him  forth."  When  it  is  added :  "  And 
saith  to  him,  *  See  that  thou  say  nothing  to  any  one  '  "  a  subse- 
quent moment  in  the  transaction  is  indicated. ^^  How  our  Lord's 
rage  was  manifested,  we  are  not  told.  And  this  is  really  just 
as  true  in  the  case  of  Matthew  as  in  that  of  Mark.  To  say, 
"he  was  enraged  at  them,  saying  (threatening  words),"  is 
not  to  say  merely,  "  he  threatened  them  " :  it  is  to  say  that  a 
threat  was  uttered  and  that  this  threat  was  the  suitable  accom- 
paniment of  his  rage. 

The  cause  of  our  Lord's  anger  does  not  lie  on  the  surface 
in  either  case.  The  commentators  seem  generally  inclined  to 
account  for  it  by  supposing  that  Jesus  foresaw  that  his  injunc- 

*  Certain  late  grammarians  (see  Stephens'  Thesaurus  sub.  voc.  iuppi. 
fMadai  and  ppifiiofiai)  define  fipifidofiai  "  to  threaten " ;  and  some  of  the 
lexicographers  do  the  like:  Hesychius  for  example  defines  Ppl/xv  as 
"  threat ",  and  Suidas  ifiPpi/xda-eai  itself  as  "  to  speak  with  anger  and 
to  blame  with  harshness",  the  latter  part  of  which  is  repeated  in  the 
Etym.  Mag.  A  scholiast  on  Aristophanes,  Eq.  855  defines  fipifidffeat  as 
"  to  be  angry  and  to  threaten  ". 

**Mt.  viii.  4,  ix.  30,  xviii.  10,  xxiv.  6;  Mk.  i.  44;  i  Thess.  v.  15;  Rev. 
xix.  10,  xxii.  9  only. 

*^So  that  Zahn  (on  Mt.  ix.  30,  p.  385)  is  misled  into  explaining:  "He 
admonished  them  in  a  menacing  tone."    Something  more  than  this  is  said. 

"Meyer  on  Mk.  i.  43  quite  accurately  connects  the  ififipifirfad/ievos  air^ 
with  ^{^/SaXcv  only,  translating :  "  after  he  had  been  angry  at  him," 
though  he  supposes  the  i^^fiakev  to  have  been  accompanied  by  "  a  vehement 
begone  now!  away  hence!"  and  accordingly  arbitrarily  paraphrases  the  ifi- 
ppififfffdfievos  "wrathfully  addressed  him."  On  Mt.  ix.  30  he  accurately 
translates:    "He  was  displeased  with  them,  and  said." 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  57 

tion  of  silence  would  be  disregarded.^^  But  this  explanation, 
little  natural  in  itself,  seems  quite  unsuitable  to  the  narrative  in 
Mark  where  we  are  told,  not  that  Jesus  angrily  enjoined  the 
leper  to  silence,  but  that  he  angrily  sent  him  away.  Others 
accordingly  seek  the  ground  of  his  anger  in  something  dis- 
pleasing to  him  in  the  demeanor  of  the  applicants  for 
his  help,  in  their  mode  of  approaching  or  addressing  him, 
in  erroneous  conceptions  with  which  they  were  animated,  and 
the  like.  Klostermann  imagines  that  our  Lord  did  not  feel 
that  miraculous  healings  lay  in  the  direct  line  of  his  vocation, 
and  was  irritated  because  he  had  been  betrayed  by  his  com- 
passion into  undertaking  them.  Volkmar  goes  the  length  of 
supposing  that  Jesus  resented  the  over-reverential  form  of  the 
address  of  the  leper  to  him,  on  the  principle  laid  down  in  Rev. 
xix.  10,  "  See  thou  do  it  not:  I  am  a  fellow-servant  with  thee." 
Even  Keil  suggests  that  Jesus  was  angry  with  the  blind  men 
because  they  addressed  him  openly  as  "  Son  of  David  ",  not 
wishing  ''  this  untimely  proclamation  of  him  as  Messiah  on 
the  part  of  those  who  held  him  as  such  only  on  account  of  his 
miracles."  It  is  more  common  to  point  out  some  shortcoming 
in  the  applicants:  they  did  not  approach  him  with  sufficient 
reverence  or  with  sufficient  knowledge  of  the  true  nature  of 
his  mission ;  they  demanded  their  cure  too  much  as  a  matter  of 
course,  or  too  much  as  if  from  a  mere  marvel-monger ;  and  in 
the  case  of  the  leper  at  least,  with  too  little  regard  to  their  own 
obligations.  A  leper  should  not  approach  a  stranger;  certain- 
ly he  should  not  ask  or  permit  a  stranger  to  put  his  hand  upon 
him ;  especially  should  he  not  approach  a  stranger  in  the  streets 

**J.  A.  Alexander,  in  Mt.  ix.  30,  puts  this  view  in  its  most  attractive 
form :  "  It  can  only  mean  a  threatening  in  case  of  disobedience,  charg- 
ing them  on  pain  of  his  serious  displeasure  and  disapprobation."  It 
comes  to  the  same  thing  when  Westcott  (on  Jno.  xi.  33)  says :  "  There  is 
the  notion  of  coercion  springing  out  of  displeasure."  Cf.  Morrison : 
"Peremptorily  charged  them"  (Mk.  i.  43);  Zahn :  "He  enjoined  them 
in  a  menacing  tone"  (Mt.  ix.  30).  Others,  of  course,  transfer  the  matter 
from  Christ  to  the  Evangelists ;  thus  even  Weiss  can  write  (on  Mt.  ix.  39)  : 
"  Perhaps  the  Evangelist  is  thinking  with  respect  to  this  ebullition  of  the 
resultlessness  of  such  prohibitions,  which  is  so  strongly  emphasized  by 
Mark  (cf.  vii.  36)." 


58  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

of  a  city  (Lk.  v.  12)  and  very  partictdarly  not  in  a  house  (Mk. 
L  43:  "  He  put  him  out"),  above  all  if  it  were,  as  it  might 
well  be  here,  a  private  house.  That  Jesus  was  indignant  at  such 
gross  disregard  of  law  was  natural  and  fully  explains  his 
vehemence  in  driving  the  leper  out  and  sternly  admonishing 
him  to  go  and  fulfil  the  legal  requirements.^^  This  variety  of 
explanation  is  the  index  of  the  slightness  of  the  guidance  given 
in  the  passages  themselves  to  the  cause  of  our  Lord's  anger; 
but  it  can  throw  no  doubt  upon  the  fact  ot.that  anger,  which  is 
directly  asserted  in  "both  instances  and  must  not  be  obscured  by 
attributing  to  the  term  by  which  it  is  expressed  some  lighter 
significance.^^  The  term  employed  declares  that  Jesus  ex- 
hibited vehement  anger,  which  was  audibly  manifested.^ ^    This 

°°  Three  or  four  such  comments  on  Mk.  i.  43  as  the  following,  when 
read  consecutively,  are  instructive.  Weiss :  "  But  obviously  Mark  thinks 
of  the  healing  as  taking  place  in  a  house  (i^^^aXev),  perhaps,  according 
to  the  connection  with  verse  39,  in  a  synagogue.  Entrance  into  the  house 
of  another  was,  no  doubt,  forbidden  to  lepers,  according  to  Lev.  xiii.  46 
cf.  Num.  V.  2  (see  Ewald  on  the  passages,  and  Alterth.  p.  180),  but 
not  altogether  access  to  the  synagogues :  in  any  case  the  resort  of  the 
people  to  Jesus  and  his  healing  of  the  sick  broke  through  the  restrictions 
of  the  law,  and  from  this  also  is  explicable  Jesus'  demeanor  of  haste 
and  vehemence."  Wohlenberg :  "  After  or  with  the  manifestation  of 
vehement  anger,  Jesus  sends  the  man  forthwith  away  (i^4pa\ep)  from 
his  presence  .  .  .  and  nothing  indicates  that  Mark  conceived  the 
occurrence  to  have  taken  place  in  a  house.  An  intensely  angry  emotion 
was  exhibited  by  Jesus  towards  the  healed  man,  because  he  observed 
in  him  a  false  and  perverse  idea  of  the  transaction."  Keil :  "  The 
occasion,  however,  of  the  angry  expulsion  of  the  healed  man,  we  cer- 
tainly are  not  to  seek  in  the  leper's  breach  of  the  law  through  entering 
the  house  of  another  (Lev.  xiii.  46  cf..  Num.  v.  2)  but  chiefly  in  his 
state  of  mind  "...  Edersheim  (Life  and  Times,  etc.,  I.  496)  :  "  This 
['cast  him  out'],  however,  as  Godet  has  shown  (Comm.  on  St.  Luke, 
German  trans,  p.  137),  does  not  imply  that  the  event  took  place  either  in 
a  house  or  in  a  town,  as  most  commentators  suppose.  It  is,  to  say 
the  least,  strange  that  the  Speaker's  Commentary,  following  Weiss, 
should  have  located  it  in  a  synagogue!  It  could  not  possibly  have  oc- 
curred there,  unless  all  Jewish  ordinances  and  customs  had  been  re- 
versed." 

"As  e.  g.  Lagrange  on  Mk.  i.  43:  "'Efippifidofiai  (again  xiv.  5;  Mt 
ix.  30;  Jno.  xi.  33,  38)  cannot  mean  anger  here,  but  only  a  certain 
severity.    Jesus  speaks  in  a  tone  which  does  not  admit  of  reply." 

"Zahn  on  Mt.  ix.  30  (p.  385)  reminds  us  that  the  word  suggests  "the 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  59 

anger  did  not  inhibit,  however,  the  operation  of  his  compas- 
sion (Mk.  i.  41 ;  Mt.  ix.  2.y)  but  appears  in  full  manifestation 
as  its  accompaniment.  This  may  indicate  that  its  cause  lay 
outside  the  objects  of  his  compassion,  in  some  general  fact 
the  nature  of  which  we  may  possibly  learn  from  other  instances. 
The  same  term  occurs  again  in  John's  narrative  of  our 
Lord's  demeanor  at  the  grave  of  his  beloved  friend  Lazarus 
(Jno.  xi.  33,  38).  When  Jesus  saw  Mary  weeping — or  rather 
"  wailing  ",  for  the  term  is  a  strong  one  and  implies  the  vocal 
expression  of  the  grief^^ — and  the  Jews  which  accompanied  her 
also  "  wailing  ",  we  are  told,  as  our  English  version  puts  it,  that 
"  he  groaned  in  the  spirit  and  was  troubled  " ;  and  again,  when 
some  of  the  Jews,  remarking  on  his  own  manifestation  of 
grief  in  tears,  expressed  their  wonder  that  he  who  had  opened 
the  eyes  of  the  blind  man  could  not  have  preserved  Lazarus 
from  death,  we  are  told  that  Jesus  "  again  groaned  in  him- 
self." The  natural  suggestion  of  the  word  "  groan  "  is,  how- 
ever, that  of  pain  or  sorrow,  not  disapprobation ;  and  this  ren- 
dering of  the  term  in  question  is  therefore  misleading.  It  is 
better  rendered  in  the  only  remaining  passage  in  which  it 
occurs  in  the  New  Testament,  Mk.  xiv.  5,  by  "  murmured  ", 
though  this  is  much  too  weak  a  word  to  reproduce  its  impli- 
cations. In  that  passage  it  is  brought  into  close  connection 
with  a  kindred  term^*  which  determines  its  meaning.  We  read: 
"  But  there  were  some  that  had  indignation  among  them- 
selves .  .  .  and  they  murmured  against  her."  Their  feeling 
of  irritated  displeasure  expressed  itself  in  an  outburst  of  tem- 
per. The  margin  of  our  Revised  Version  at  Jno.  xi.  33,  38, 
therefore,  very  properly  proposes  that  we  should  for 
"  groaned  "  in  these  passages,  substitute  "  moved  with  indigna- 
tion ",  although  that  phrase  too  is  scarcely  strong  enough. 
What  John  tells  us,  in  point  of  fact,  is  that  Jesus  approached 

audible  expression  of  wrath ".  Cf.  Mk.  xiv.  4-5  where  we  are  told 
that  "there  were  some  that  had  indignation  ( d7ai/o/cToCi/Tes ) ,  among 
themselves — and  they  murmured  (iveppi/xQvro')  against  her".  The  inward 
emotion  is  expressed  by  dyavaKT^ui,  its  manifestation  in  audible  form  by 
ifjL^pifidofiai. 

"'See  above,  note  19;  and  cf.  Gumlich,  TSK,  1862,  p.  258. 

^' AyavaKTiu)  :  see  above,  notes  41  and  52. 


6o  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

the  grave  of  Lazarus,  in  a  state,  not  of  uncontrollable  grief, 
but  of  irrepressible  anger.  He  did  respond  to  the  spectacle 
of  human  sorrow  abandoning  itself  to  its  unrestrained  expres- 
sion, with  quiet,  sympathetic  tears :  "  Jesus  wept "  (verse 
36).'''  But  the  emotion  which  tore  his  breast  and  clamored 
for  utterance  was  just  rage.  The  expression  even  of  this  rage, 
however,  was  strongly  curbed.  The  term  which  John  employs 
to  describe  it  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  definitely  external  term.^^ 
"  He  raged."  But  John  modifies  its  external  sense  by  an- 
nexed qualifications :  "  He  raged  in  spirit/'  '*  raging  in  him- 
self."  He  thus  interiorizes  the  term  and  gives  us  to  under- 
stand that  the  ebullition  of  Jesus'  anger  expended  itself  within 
him.  Not  that  there  was  no  manifestation  of  it :  it  must  have 
been  observable  to  be  observed  and  recorded  f^  it  formed  a 
marked  feature  of  the  occurrence  as  seen  and  heard.^®  But 
John  gives  us  to  understand  that  the  external  expression  of  our 
Lord's  fury  was  markedly  restrained:  its  manifestation  fell 
far  short  of  its  real  intensity.  He  even  traces  for  us  the  move- 
ments of  his  inward  struggle:  "J^sus,  therefore,  when  he 
saw  her  wailing,  and  the  Jews  that  had  come  with  her  wail- 
ing, was  enraged  in  spirit  and  troubled  himself  "  ^^  .  .  .  and 
wept.  His  inwardly  restrained  fury  produced  a  profound  agi- 
tation of  his  whole  being,  one  of  the  manifestations  of  which 
was  tears. 

Why  did  the  sight  of  the  wailing  of  Mary  and  her  com- 
panions enrage  Jesus?  Certainly  not  because  of  the  extreme 
violence  of  its  expression ;  and  even  more  certainly  not  because 
it  argued  unbelief — unwillingness  to  submit  to  God's  providen- 

"*  AaKpio)   (not  kXalu  as  in  verse  33)  :  see  above,  note  18. 

■*  See  above :  note  43. 

"  So  Hengstenberg,  in  particular,  and  many  after  him. 

■^John  Hutchison,  The  Monthly  Interpreter,  1885,  II.  p.  286:  "A 
storm  of  wrath  was  seen  to  sweep  over  him." 

"Kai  irdpa^ev  iavrSv.  Many  commentators  insist  on  the  voluntari- 
ness of  Jesus'  emotion,  expressed  by  this  phrase.  Thus  John  Hutchison, 
as  above,  p.  288 :  "  It  was  an  act  of  his  own  free  will,  not  a  passion 
hurrying  him  on,  but  a  voluntarily  assumed  state  of  feeling  which 
remained  under  his  direction  and  control.  .  .  In  a  word  there  was  no 
irc^la  in  it."  For  tHe  necessary  limitations  of  this  view  see  Calvin 
on  this  passage.     Cf.  Liitgert  as  cited,  p.  145. 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  6l 

tial  ordering  or  distrust  of  Jesus'  power  to  save.  He  himself 
wept,  if  with  less  violence  yet  in  true  sympathy  with  the  grief 
of  which  he  was  witness.  The  intensity  of  his  exasperation, 
moreover,  would  be  disproportionate  to  such  a  cause;  and  the 
importance  attached  to  it  in  the  account  bids  us  seek  its  ground 
in  something  less  incidental  to  the  main  drift  of  the  narrative. 
It  is  mentioned  twice,  and  is  obviously  emphasized  as  an  indis- 
pensable element  in  the  development  of  the  story,  on  which,  in 
its  due  place  and  degree,  the  lesson  of  the  incident  hangs.  The 
spectacle  of  the  distress  of  Mary  and  her  companions  enraged 
Jesus  because  it  brought  poignantly  home  to  his  consciousness 
the  evil  of  death,  its  unnaturalness,  its  "  violent  tyranny  "  as 
Calvin  (on  verse  38)  phrases  it.  In  Mary's  grief,  he  "  contem- 
plates " — still  to  adopt  Calvin's  words  (on  verse  33), — "the 
general  misery  of  the  whole  human  race  "  and  burns  with 
rage  against  the  oppressor  of  men.  Inextinguishable  fury 
seizes  upon  him;  his  whole  being  is  discomposed  and  per- 
turbed; and  his  heart,  if  not  his  lips,  cries  out, — 

"  For  the  innumerable  dead 
Is  my  soul  disquieted."  ^^ 

It  is  death  that  is  the  object  of  his  wrath,  and  behind  death 
him  who  has  the  power  of  death,  and  whom  he  has  come  into 
the  world  to  destroy.  Tears  of  sympathy  may  fill  his  eyes, 
but  this  is  incidental.  His  soul  is  held  by  rage:  and  he  ad- 
vances to  the  tomb,  in  Calvin's  words  again,  "  as  a  champion 
who  prepares  for  conflict."  The  raising  of  Lazarus  thus  be- 
comes, not  an  isolated  marvel,  but — as  indeed  it  is  presented 
throughout  the  whole  narrative  (compare  especially,  verses 
24-26) — a  decisive  instance  and  open  symbol  of  Jesus'  con- 
quest of  death  and  hell.  What  John  does  for  us  in  this  par- 
ticular statement  is  to  uncover  to  us  the  heart  of  Jesus,  as  he 
wins  for  us  our  salvation.    Not  in  cold  unconcern,  but  in  flam- 

""  Cf.  John   Hutchison,  as  above,  p.  375 :     "  He  was  gazing  into  '  the 
skeleton  face  of  the  world ',  and  tracing  everywhere  the  reign  of  death. 
The  whole  earth  to  him  was  but  *  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death ', 
and  in  these  tears  which  were  shed  in  his  presence,  he  saw  that 
*  Ocean  of  Time,  whose  waters  of  deep  woe, 
Are  brackish  with  the  salt  of  human  tears '." 


I 


62  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

ing  wrath  against  the  foe,  Jesus  smites  in  our  behalf.  He  has 
not  only  saved  us  from  the  evils  which  oppress  us;  he  has 
felt  for  and  with  us  in  our  oppression,  and  under  the  impulse 
of  these  feelings  has  wrought  out  our  redemption.^^ 

There  is  another  term  which  the  Synoptic  Gospels  employ 
to  describe  our  Lord's  dealing  with  those  he  healed  (Mt.  xii. 
i6),  which  is  sometimes  rendered  by  our  English  versions — as 
the  term  we  have  just  been  considering  is  rendered  in  similar 
connections  (M{c.  i.  43 ;  Mt.  ix.  30) — by  "charged  "  (Mt.  xii. 
16,  xvi.  20;  Mk.,  iii.  12,  viii.  30,  ix.  21)  ;  but  more  frequently 
with  more  regard  to  its  connotation  of  censure,  implying  dis- 
pleasure, "  by  rebuked  "  (Mt.  xvii.  18;  Mk.  ix.  21 ;  Lk.  iv.  35- 
41,  xix.  42;  Mk.  viii.  30;  Lk.  ix.  55;  Mt.  viii.  20;  Mk.  iv.  39; 
Lk.  iv.  39,  viii.  24). ^^  This  term,  the  fundamental  meaning  of 
which  is  '*  to  mete  out  due  measure  ",  with  that  melancholy 
necessity  which  carries  all  terms  which  express  doing  justice 
to  sinful  men  downwards  in  their  connotation,  is  used  in  the 
New  Testament  only  in  malam  partem,  and  we  may  be  quite 
sure  is  never  employed  without  its  implication  of  censure.^^ 
What  is  implied  by  its  employment  is  that  our  Lord  in  work- 

•^  The  classical  exposition  of  the  whole  passage  is  F.  Gumlich's,  Die 
Rdthsel  der  Erweckung  Lazari,  in  the  Theologische  Studien  und  Kritiken, 
1862,  pp.  65-110,  and  248-336.  See  also  John  Hutchison,  in  The  Monthly 
Interpreter,  1885,  II.  pp.  281-296  and  374-386. 

^'EiriTifjidb}''  See  Schmidt,  Synonymik  etc.  I.  1876,  §  4,  11,  p.  147: 
"ArtTt/tai'  is  properly  to  impute  something  to  one  (as  a  fault)  .  .  . 
And  indeed  it  denotes  harsh  and  in  general  vehement  reproaches  with 
reference  to  unworthy  deeds  or  customs,  construed  ordinarily  with  the 
dative  of  the  person:  to  condemn  with  harsh  words,  to  heap  reproaches 
on."    Cf.  also  Trench,  §  4  (p.  12). 

"Swete,  on  Mk.  i.  25:  '^iiririfiSiv,  Vg.  comminari,  Wycliflfe  and  Rheims 
*  threaten ',  other  English  Versions,  *  rebuke ' :  the  strict  meaning  of 
the  word  is  '  to  mete-out  due  measure ',  but  in  the  N.  T.  it  is  used  only 
of  censure  ".  Plummer  on  Lk.  iv.  35 :  "  In  N.  T.  iiririfidu  has  no  other 
meaning  than  'rebuke';  but  in  classical  Greek  it  means — i.  'lay  a  value 
on,  rate';  2.  'lay  a  penalty  on,  sentence';  3.  'chide,  rate,  rebuke'." 
"The  verb  is  often  used  of  rebuking  violence  (verse  41,  viii.  24,  ix.  42; 
M.t.  viii.  26,  xviii.  18 ;  Mk.  iv,  39 ;  Jud.  ix)  ;  yet  must  not  on  that  account 
be  rendered  'restrain'  (Fritzsche  on  M»t.  viii.  26,  p.  325)."  Morrison 
accordingly  thinks  that  "rated"  might  give  the  essential  meaning  of  the 
word.    Lagrange  (on  Mk.  i.  28)  unduly  weakens  the  term. 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  63 

ing  certain  cures,  and,  indeed,  in  performing  others  of  his 
miracles — as  well  as  in  laying  charges  on  his  followers — 
spoke,  not  merely  "  strongly  and  peremptorily  ",^*  but  chid- 
ingly,  that  is  to  say,  with  expressed  displeasure.^^  There  is  in 
these  instances  perhaps  not  so  strong  but  just  as  clear  an  as- 
cription of  the  emotion  of  anger  to  our  Lord  as  in  those  we 
have  already  noted,  and  this  suggests  that  not  merely  in  the 
case  of  the  raising  of  Lazarus  but  in  many  other  instances  in 
which  he  put  forth  his  almighty  power  to  rescue  men  from 
the  evils  which  burdened  them,  our  Lord  was  moved  by  an 
ebullition  of  indignant  anger  at  the  destructive  powers  ex- 
hibited in  disease  or  even  in  the  convulsions  of  nature.^®  In 
instances  like  Mt  xii.  16;  Mk.  iii.  12;  Mt.  xvi.  20;  Mk.  viii. 
30;  Lk.  ix.  21,  the  censure  inherent  in  the  term'  may  almost 
seem  to  become  something  akin  to  menace  or  threat :  "he 
chided  them  to  the  end  that  they  should  not  make  him 
known;"  he  made  a  show  of  anger  or  displeasure  directed  to 
this  end.  In  the  cases  where,  however,  Jesus  chided  the  un- 
clean spirits  which  he  cast  out  it  seems  to  lie  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  it  was  the  tyrannous  evil  which  they  were  working 
upon  their  victims  that  was  the  occasion  of  his  displeasure.^''^ 
When  he  is  said  to  have  "  rebuked  "  a  fever  which  was  tor- 
menting a  human  being  (Lk.  iv.  39)  or  the  natural  elements^ — 
the  wind  and  sea — menacing  human  lives  (Mt.  viii.  26;  Mk. 
iv.  39;  Lk.  viii.  24),  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he 
looked  upon  these  natural  powers  as  themselves  personal,  and 
as  little  that  the  personification  is  only  figurative ;  we  may  not 

"Morrison  on  Mk.  iii.  12. 

*^Hahn  on  Lk.  iv.  35:  '^iTrLTifi-naep  airq),  that  is,  he  vehemently  com- 
manded him,  charged  him  with  strong,  chiding  words  (cf,  verses  39,  41, 
viii.  24,  ix.  21,  42,  55),  an  expression  by  which  Luke  would  say  that 
Jesus  spoke  the  following  words  in  a  tone  of  highest  displeasure :"  cf. 
on  verse  39. 

^  Cf.  Gumlich,  TSK,  1862  p.  287 :  "  Similar  movements  of  anger, 
ttriTifidv  instead  of  ifx^piixdadai  directly  before  or  after  a  miracle,  we 
find  also  elsewhere  in  him:  threats  (Bedrohen)  to  the  wind  and  the  sea 
(Mt.  viii.  26),  most  frequently  in  the  case  of  healings  of  possessed  people 
of  a  difficult  kind  (Mt.  viii.  26,  vii.  18;  Mk.  ix.  21,  i.  25,  iii.  12;  Lk.  iv.  41)." 

*^  In  Mk,  viii.  33 ;  Lk.  ix.  55  the  objects  of  his  displeasure  were  his  fol- 
lowers. 


64  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

improperly  suppose  that  the  displeasure  he  exhibited  in  his  up- 
braiding them  was  directed  against  the  power  behind  these 
manifestations  of  a  nature  out  of  joint,  the  same  malignant  in- 
fluence which  he  advanced  to  the  conquest  of  when  he  drew 
near  to  the  tomb  of  Lazarus. ^^  In  any  event  the  series  of  pas- 
sages in  which  this  term  is  employed  to  ascribe  to  Jesus  acts 
inferring  displeasure,  greatly  enlarges  the  view  we  have  of  the 
play  of  Jesus'  emotions  of  anger.  We  see  him  chiding  his 
disciples,  the  demons  that  were  tormenting  men,  and  the  natural 
powers  which  \yere  menacing  their  lives'^br  safety,  and  speak- 
ing in  tones  of  rebuke  to  the  multitudes  who  were  the  recipients 
of  his  healing  grace  (Mt.  xii.  i6).  And  that  we  are  not  to 
suppose  that  this  chiding  was  always  mild  we  are  advised  by 

•*  Cf.  Zahn,  Das  Evangelium  des  Johannes,  1908,  p.  480,  note  82 :  "  Since 
Jesus,  without  prejudice  to  his  faith  in  the  all-embracing  providence  and 
universal  government  of  God,  looked  upon  all  disease,  and  not  merely 
possession,  as  the  work  of  Satan  (Lk.  xiii.  16,  x.  19,  cf.  Acts  xvi.  38; 
2  Cor.  xii.  7),  and  held  him  to  be  the  author  not  only  of  isolated  miseries, 
but  of  the  death  of  man  in  general  (Jno.  viii.  44)  ;  Heb.  ii.  14  does  not  go 
beyond  Jesus'  circle  of  ideas." — Also  Henry  Norris  Bernard,  The  Mental 
Characteristics  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  1888,  pp.  90-91 :  "  The  miracles 
of  Christ  formed  part  of  that  warfare  which  was  ever  waging  between 
the  Son  of  God  and  the  power  of  evil  which  he  was  manifested  to 
destroy.  The  rage  of  the  elements,  the  roaring  wind,  and  the  surging 
waves  ever  seeking  to  engulf  the  fishers'  boat;  the  fell  sickness  racking 
with  pain  man's  body ;  the  paralysis  of  the  mental  powers  destroying  man's 
intellect,  and  leaving  him  a  prey  to  unreasoning  violence,  or  to  unclean 
desires;  the  death  which  shrouded  him  in  the  unknown  darkness  of  the 
tomb — these  things  were  to  the  Saviour's  vision  but  objective  forms  of 
the  curse  of  sin  which  it  was  his  mission  to  remove.  The  Kingdom  of 
God  and  the  Kingdom  of  Satan  were  brought  together  in  opposition. 
The  battle  between  the  Lord's  Christ  and  the  great  adversary  was  ever 
going  on.  Man's  infirmities  and  his  sicknesses,  in  the  eyes  of  Christ,  were 
the  outward  symbols  of  the  sin  which  was  their  cause.  So  the  inspired 
writer,  in  the  healing  of  the  sick,  and  in  the  casting  out  of  devils,  sees 
direct  blows  given,  which,  in  the  end,  shall  cause  Satan's  empire  to  totter 
to  its  fall.  Every  leper  cleansed,  every  blind  man  restored  to  sight,  every 
helpless  paralytic  made  to  walk,  every  distracted  man  brought  back  to 
the  sweetness  of  life  and  light  of  reason,  above  all  the  dead  recalled  to 
life — each,  in  the  salvation  accorded  them,  furnished  a  proof  that  a 
greater  than  Satan  was  here,  and  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  being 
manifested  upon  earth." 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  65 

the  express  declaration  that  it  was  in  one  instance  at  least, 
^'vehement"  (Mk.  iii.  I2).6^ 

Perhaps  in  no  incidents  recorded  in  the  Gospels  is  the  action 
of  our  Lord's  indignation  more  vividly  displayed  than  in  the  ac- 
counts of  the  cleansings  of  the  Temple.  In  closing  the  ac- 
count which  he  gives  of  the  earlier  of  these,  John  tells  us  that 
"  his  disciples  remembered  that  it  was  written.  The  zeal  of 
thine  house  shall  eat  me  up"  (Jno.  ii.  17).  The  word  here 
employed — **  zeal  " — may  mean  nothing  more  than  "  ardor  " ; 
but  this  ardor  may  burn  with  hot  indignation, — we  read  of  a 
"  zeal  of  fire  which  shall  devour  the  adversaries  "  (Heb.  x. 
27).  And  it  seems  to  be  this  hot  indignation  at  the  pollution 
of  the  house  of  God — this  "  burning  jealousy  for  the  holiness 
of  the  house  of  God  "  '^^' — which  it  connotes  in  our  present 
passage.  In  this  act,  Jesus  in  effect  gave  vent  **  to  a  righteous 
anger  'V^  and  perceiving  his  wrathful  zeaF^  his  followers 
recognized  in  it  the  Messianic  fulfilment  of  the  words  in 
which  the  Psalmist  represents  himself  as  filled  with  a  zeal  for 
the  house  of  Jehovah,  and  the  honor  of  him  who  sits  in  it,  that 
"  consumes  him  like  a  fire  burning  in  his  bones,  which  in- 
cessantly breaks  through  and  rages  all  through  him."  "^^  The 
form  in  which  it  here  breaks  forth  is  that  of  indignant  anger 
towards  those  who  defile  God's  house  with  traficking,  and  it 
thus  presents  us  with  one  of  the  most  striking  manifestations 
of  the  anger  of  Jesus  in  act. 

It  is  far,  however,  from  being  the  only  instance  in  which  the 
action  of  Jesus'  anger  is  recorded  for  us.  And  the  severity  of 
his  language  equals  the  decisiveness  of  his  action.     He  does 

"*  Cf.  Swete  in  loc;  also  Lagrange :  "iroXXd,  taken  adverbially,  does 
not  mean  in  Mk.  '  often ',  nor  even  '  in  a  prolonged  fashion ',  but  *  earn- 
estly', 'strongly',  'greatly'  (except  perhaps  in  i.  45)  ;  cf.  v,  10,  23,  43,  vi. 
20,  ix.  26;  the  Vulgate  has,  therefore,  well  rendered  it  vehementer  (here 
and  xvi.  43)." 

'"  Westcott  in  loc. 

"Zahn  in  loc:  p.  168.  t 

"Meyer  in  loc:  "In  this  wrathful  zeal  which  they  saw  had  taken  hold 
of  Jesus,  they  thought  they  saw  the  Messianic  fulfilment  of  that  word  of 
the  psalm.    ..." 

"Delitzsch  in  loc. 


66  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

not  scruple  to  assault  his  opponents  with  the  most  vigorous 
denunciation.  Herod  he  calls  "  that  fox  "  (Lk.  xiii.  32)  ;  the 
unreceptive,  he  designates  briefly  **  swine  "  (Mt.  vii.  6)  ;  those 
that  tempt  him  he  visits  with  the  extreme  term  of  ignominy — 
Satan  (Mk.  viii.  33).  The  opprobrious  epithet  of  "hypo- 
crites "  is  repeatedly  on  his  lips  (Mt.  xv.  7,  xxiii.  passim;  Lk. 
xiii.  15),  and  he  added  force  to  this  reprobation  by  clothing  it 
in  violent  figures, — they  were  "  blind  guides  ",  '*  whited  sepul- 
chres ",  and,  less  tropically,  **  a  faithless^and  perverse  genera- 
tion ",  a  "  wicked  and  adulterous  generation  ".  He  does  not 
shrink  even  from  vituperatively  designating  them  ravening 
wolves  (Mt.  vii.  15),  serpents,  brood  of  vipers  (Mt.  xii.  34), 
even  children  of  the  evil  one :  "  Ye  are  ",  he  declares  plainly, 
"  of  your  father,  the  Devil  "  (Jno.  viii.  44).  The  long  arraign- 
ment of  the  Pharisees  in  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  Matthew 
with  its  iterant,  "  Woe  unto  you.  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypo- 
crites !  "  and  its  uncompromising  denunciation,  fairly  throbs 
with  indignation,  and  brings  Jesus  before  us  in  his  sternest 
mood,  the  mood  of  the  nobleman  in  the  parable  (Lk.  xix.  27), 
whom  he  represents  as  commanding:  "And  as  for  these  my 
enemies,  bring  them  hither  and  slay  them  before  me."  ''^^ 

The  holy  resentment  of  Jesus  has  been  made  the  subject  of  a 
famous  chapter  in  Ecco  HomoJ^  The  contention  of  this  chap- 
ter is  that  he  who  loves  men  must  needs  hate  with  a  burning 
hatred  all  that  does  wrong  to  human  beings,  and  that,  in  point 
of  fact,  Jesus  never  wavered  in  his  consistent  resentment  of 
the  special  wrong-doing  which  he  was  called  upon  to  witness. 
The  chapter  announces  as  its  thesis,  indeed,  the  paradox  that 
true  mercy  is  no  less  the  product  of  anger  than  of  pity :  that 
what  differentiates  the  divine  virtue  of  mercy  from  "  the  vice 

"  Cf.  James  Denney,  article  "  Anger  ",  and  E.  Daplyn,  article  "  Fierce- 
ness ",  in  Hastings'  DCG.  Also  Liitgert,  as  cited,  p.  97  where  instances  of 
our  Lord's  expressions  of  anger,  "  which  occupy  a  large  place  in  the 
Synoptics  "  are  gathered  together,  and  p.  99  where  it  is  pointed  out  that 
"Jesus  grounds  his  declarations  of  woe,  not  on  what  his  opponents  had 
done  to  him,  but  purely  on  their  sins  against  the  law  and  the  prophets 
.  .  .  Jesus'  anger  remains  therefore  pure  because  it  burns  against  what 
is  done  against  God,  and  not  against  what  has  happened  to  himself  ". 

"Chapter  xxi.  "The  Law  of  Resentment." 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  67 

of  insensibility  "  which  is  called  "  tolerance  ",  is  just  the  under- 
lying presence  of  indignation.  Thus — so  the  reasoning  runs, — 
"  the  man  who  cannot  be  angry  cannot  be  merciful,"  and  it 
was  therefore  precisely  the  anger  of  Christ  which  proved  that 
the  unbounded  compassion  he  manifested  to  sinners  "  was 
really  mercy  and  not  mere  tolerance."  The  analysis  is  doubt- 
less incomplete ;  but  the  suggestion,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  fruit- 
ful. Jesus'  anger  is  not  merely  the  seamy  side  of  his  pity;  it 
is  the  righteous  reaction  of  his  moral  sense  in  the  presence  of 
evil.  But  Jesus  burned  with  anger  against  the  wrongs  he  met 
with  in  his  journey  through  human  life  as  truly  as  he  melted 
with  pity  at  the  sight  of  the  world's  misery :  and  it  was  out  of 
these  two  emotions  that  his  actual  mercy  proceeded. 

III. 

We  call  our  Lord  "  the  Man  of  Sorrows  ",  and  the  designa- 
tion is  obviously  appropriate  for  one  who  came  into  the  world 
to  bear  the  sins  of  men  and  to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for  many. 
It  is^  however,  not  a  designation  which  is  applied  to  Christ  in 
the  New  Testament,  and  even  in  the  Prophet  (Is.  liii.  3)  it 
may  very  well  refer  rather  to  the  objective  afflictions  of  the 
righteous  servant  than  to  his  subjective  distresses. "^^  In  any 
event  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  our  Lord  did  not  come  into  the 
world  to  be  broken  by  the  power  of  sin  and  death,  but  to  break 
it.  He  came  as  a  conqueror  with  the  gladness  of  the  imminent 
victory  in  his  heart;  for  the  joy  set  before  him  he  was  able 
to  endure  the  cross,  despising  shame  (Heb.  xii.  2).  And  as 
he  did  not  prosecute  his  work  in  doubt  of  the  issue,  neither 
did  he  prosecute  it  hesitantly  as  to  its  methods.  He  rather 
(so  we  are  told,  Lk.  x.  21)  "  exulted  in  the  Holy  Spirit  "  as 
he  contemplated  the  ways  of  God  in  bringing  many  sons  to 
glory.  The  word  is  a  strong  one  and  conveys  the  idea  of  exu- 
berant gladness,  a  gladness  which  fills  the  heart ;  '^'^  and  it  is 

'*  So  e.  g.  Cheyne,  G.  A.  Smith,  Skinner,  Workman. 

" ' AydWidofxai  :  see  G.  Heine,  Synonymik  des  N.T. -lichen  Griechisch 
1898,  p.  147  '.'■'xo-h^  in  general,  gaudeo,  laetor  (xap^^  HDi^),  ayaWidoj,  -o/xat 
(  7'il  )  exsulto,  vehementer  gaudeo,  Mt.  v.  12;  Lk.  x.  21  (  dvaXXWis) 
Lk   i.    14,   44,  summum  gaudium    (frequently   in   LXX;   not   classical)". 


68  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

intimated  that,  on  this  occasion  at  least,  this  exultation  was  a 
product  in  Christ — and  therefore  in  his  human  nature — of  the 
operations  of  the  Holy  Spirit,^^  whom  we  must  suppose  to  have 
been  always  working  in  the  human  soul  of  Christ,  sustaining 
and  strengthening  it.  It  cannot  be  supposed  that,  this  particu- 
lar occasion  alone  being  excepted,  Jesus  prosecuted  his  work 
on  earth  in  a  state  of  mental  depression.  His  advent  into  the 
world  was  announced  as  "good  tidings  of  great  joy"  (Lk.  ii. 
lo),  and  the, tidings  which  he  himself  jDroelaimed  were  *' the 
good  tidings  "  by  way  of  eminence.  Is  it  conceivable  that  he 
went  about  proclaiming  them  with  a  "  sad  countenance " 
(Mt.  vi.  i6)  ?  It  is  misleading  then  to  say  mierely,  with 
Jeremy  Taylor,  "  We  never  read  that  Jesus  laughed  and  but 
once  that  he  rejoiced  in  spirit."^^  We  do  read  that,  in  con- 
There  is  a  good  brief  account  of  the  word  given  by  C.  F.  Gelpe, 
in  the  Theologische  Studien  und  Kritiken,  1849,  pp.  645-646:  "the  pro- 
foundest  and  highest  transport ".  Cf.  Godet  in  loc. "  'Aya\\ia<r6ai,  to 
exult,  denotes  an  inner  transport,  which  takes  place  in  the  same  deep 
regions  of  the  soul  of  Jesus  as  the  opposite  emotion  expressed  by  the 
ifiPpifidffdai ,  to  groan  (Jno.  xi.  ^S)-  This  powerful  influence  of  external 
events  on  the  inner  being  of  Jesus  proves  how  thoroughly  in  earnest  the 
Gospels  take  his  humanity." 

"  Plummer  in  loc:  "This  joy  is  a  divine  inspiration.  The  fact  is 
analogous  to  his  being  'led  by  the  Spirit  in  the  wilderness',  (iv.  i)." 

"  The  Whole  Works  of  Jeremy  Taylor.  Ed.  Heber,  London  1828.  II. 
p.  Ixvii.  Jeremy  Taylor's  object  is  to  show  that  Christ  is  not  imitable  by 
us  in  everything ;  hence  he  proceeds  at  once :  "  But  the  declensions  of  cur 
natures  cannot  bear  the  weight  of  a  perpetual  grave  deportment,  without 
the  intervals  of  refreshment  and  free  alacrity."  This  whole  view  of 
our  Lord's  deportment  lacks  justification:  but  it  has  been  widely  held  from 
the  earliest  times.  Basil  the  Great,  for  instance,  in  condemning  immoder- 
ate mirth,  appeals  to  our  Lord's  example, — although  he  accounts  for  his  de- 
portment on  a  theory  which  bears  traces  of  the  "  apathetic "  ideal  of 
virtue  so  wide-spread  in  his  day.  "  And  the  Lord  appears  to  have  sus- 
tained"  says  he  (Regulae  fusius  Tractatae,  17:  Migne,  PG.  xxxi.  p.  961), 
"  the  passions  which  are  necessary  to  the  flesh  and  whatever  of  them 
bear  testimony  to  virtue,  such  as  weariness,  and  pity  to  the  afflicted: 
but  never  to  have  used  laughter,  so  far  as  may  be  learned  from  the 
narrative  of  the  Evangelists,  but  to  have  pronounced  a  woe  upon  those 
who  are  held  by  it  (Lk.  vi.  25)."  Chrysostom  {Horn,  vi  in  Matth.:  Migne, 
PG.  Ivii,  p.  69)  in  commending  a  grave  life  by  the  example  of  Christ, 
exaggerates  the  matter :  "  If  thou  also  weep  thus,  thou  hast  become  an 
imitator   of  thy   Lord.     For   he   also   himself   wept,   both   over    Lazarus 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  69 

trast  with  John  the  Baptist,  he  came  ''  eating  and  drinking  ", 
and  accordingly  was  mahgnantly  called  "  a  gluttonous  man 
and  a  wine-bibber,  a  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners"  (Mt.  xi. 
19;  Lk.  vii.  34)  ;  and  this  certainly  does  not  encourage  us  to 
think  of  his  demeanor  at  least  as  habitually  sorrowful. 

It  is  pure  perversion,  to  be  sure,  when  Renan,  after  the  de- 
basing fashion  of  his  sentimentalizing  frivolity,  transmutes 
Jesus'  joy  in  his  redemptive  work  (Jno.  xv.  11,  xvii.  13)  into 
mere  pagan  lightness  of  heart  and  delight  in  living,  as  if  his 
fundamental  disposition  were  a  kind  of  "  sweet  gaiety  "  which 
'*  was  incessantly  expressing  itself  in  lively  reflections,  and 
kindly  pleasantries."  He  assures  us  that  Jesus  travelled  about 
Palestine  almost  as  if  he  was  some  lord  of  revelry,  bringing 
a  festival  wherever  he  came,  and  greeted  at  every  doorstep  ''  as 
a  joy  and  a  benediction  " :  ''  the  women  and  children  adored 
him."  The  infancy  of  the  world  had  come  back  with  him 
''  with  its  divine  spontaneity  and  its  naive  dizzinesses  of  joy." 
At  his  touch  the  hard  conditions  of  life  vanished  from  sight, 
and  there  took  possession  of  men,  the  dream  of  an  imminent 
paradise,  of  *'  a  delightful  garden  in  which  should  continue 
forever  the  charming  life  they  now  were  living."  "  How 
long  ",  asks  Renan,  "  did  this  intoxication  last?  ",  and  answers : 
"  We  do  not  know.  During  the  continuance  of  this  magical 
apparition,  time  was  not  measured.  Duration  was  suspended; 
a  week  was  a  century.  But  whether  it  filled  years  or  months, 
the  dream  was  so  beautiful  that  humanity  has  lived  on  it  ever 
since,  and  our  consolation  still  is  to  catch  its  fading  fragrance. 
Never  did  so  much  joy  stir  the  heart  of  man.  For  a  moment  in 
this  most  vigorous  attempt  it  has  ever  made  to  lift  itself  above 
its  planet,  humanity  forgot  the  leaden  weight  which  holds  it 
to  the  earth  and  the  sorrows  of  the  life  here  below.  Happy  he 
who  could  see  with  his  own  eyes  this  divine  effloresence  and 
share,  if  even  for  a  day,  this  unparalleled  illusion !"  ®^ 

The  perversion  is  equally  great,  however,  when  there  is 

and  over  the  city;   and  touching  Judas  he  was  greatly  troubled.     And 
this,  indeed,  he  is  often  to  be  seen  doing,  but  never  laughing  (7cXwi^ra), 
and  not  even  smiling  even  a  little ;  at  least  no  one  of  the  Evangelists  has 
mentioned  it." 
^  Vie  de  Jesus,  ch.  xi.  ad  fin.;  ed.  2.  1863,  pp.  188-194. 


70  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR   LORD 

attributed  to  our  Lord,  as  it  is  now  very  much  the  fashion  to 
do,  "  before  the  black  shadow  of  the  cross  fell  athwart  his 
pathway,"  the  exuberant  joy  of  a  great  hope  never  to  be  ful- 
filled :  the  hope  of  winning  his  people  tQ  his  side  and  of  inau- 
gurating the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  this  sinful  earth  by  the 
mere  force  of  its  proclamation.^^  Jesus  was  never  the  victim 
of  any  such  illusion :  he  came  into  the  world  on  a  mission 
of  ministering  mercy  to  the  lost,  giving  his  life  as  a  ransom 
for  many  (Lk.  xix,  lo;  Mk.  x.  4;  Mt.  xx.  28)  ;  and  from  the 
beginning  he  set  his  feet  steadfastly  in  the  path  of  suffering 
(Mt.  iv.  3  f. ;  Lk.  iv.  3  f.)  which  he  knew  led  straight  onward 
to  death  (Jno.  ii.  19,  iii.  14;  Mt.  xii.  40;  Lk.  xii.  49-50;  Mt. 
ix.  15;  Mk.  ii.  1-9;  Lk.  v.  34,  etc.).  Joy  he  had:  but  it  was 
not  the  shallow  joy  of  mere  pagan  delight  in  living,  nor  the  de- 
lusive joy  of  a  hope  destined  to  failure;  but  the  deep  exultation 
of  a  conqueror  setting  captives  free.  This  joy  underlay  all 
his  sufferings  and  shed  its  light  along  the  whole  thorn-beset 
path  which  was  trodden  by  his  torn  feet.  We  hear  but  little 
of  it,  however,  as  we  hear  but  little  of  his  sorrows:  the  nar- 
ratives are  not  given  to  descriptions  of  the  mental  states  of  the 
great  actor  whose  work  they  illustrate.  We  hear  just  enough 
of  it  to  assure  us  of  its  presence  underlying  and  giving  its  color 
to  all  his  life  (Lk.  iv.  21  ;^2  Jno.  v.  11,  xvii.  13®^).  If  our 
Lord  was  **  the  Man  of  Sorrows  ",  he  was  more  profoundly 
still  "  the  Man  of  Joy  ".«^ 

"  Cf.  the  article  "  Foresight "  in  Hastings'  DCG.  See  for  example,  A. 
Julicher,  Die  Gleichnisreden  Jesu,  I.  p.  144;  Paul  Wernle,  Die  Anfdnge 
unserer  Religion,  p.  65 :  "  There  was  a  time  in  Jesus'  life,  when  a  wholly 
extraordinary  hope  filled  his  soul.  .  .  Then,  Jesus  knew  himself  to  be 
in  harmony  with  all  the  good  forces  of  his  people  .  .  .  that  was  the 
happiest  time  of  his  life.  .  .  .  We  only  need  to  ask  whether  Jesus 
retained  this  enthusiastic  faith  to  the  end.  To  that  period  of  joyful  hope 
there  succeeded  a  deep  depression." 

'**A7oXXt<£oAiot  ;  see  note  77  above, 

'*Xapd:  consult  also  the  use  in  parables  of  both  xopd,  Mt.  xxv.  21,  23; 
Lk.  XV.  10,  and  x«W.  Mt.  xviii.  13;  Lk.  xv.  5,  32. 

"A.  B.  Bruce,  The  Humiliation  of  Christ,''  1881,  p.  334:  "Hence, 
though  a  man  of  sorrow,  he  was  even  on  earth  anointed  with  the  oil 
of  gladness  above  his  fellows.  .  .  .  Shall  we  wonder  that  there  was 
divine  gladness  in  the  heart  of  him  who  came  into  the  world,  not  by 
constraint,  but  willingly;  not  with  a  burning  sense  of  wrong,  but  with  a 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  71 

Of  the  lighter  pleasurable  emotions  that  flit  across  the  mind 
in  response  to  appropriate  incitements  arising  occasionally  in 
the  course  of  social  intercourse,  we  also  hear  little  in  the  case 
of  Jesus.  It  is  not  once  recorded  that  he  laughed ;  we  do  not 
ever  hear  even  that  he  smiled ;  only  once  are  we  told  that  he  was 
glad,  and  then  it  is  rather  sober  gratification  than  exuberant 
delight  which  is  spoken  of  in  connection  with  him  (Jno.  xi. 
15).  But,  then,  we  hear  little  also  of  his  passing  sorrows. 
The  sight  of  Mary  and  her  companions  wailing  at  the  tomb 
of  Lazarus,  agitated  his  soul  and  caused  him  tears  (Jno.  xi. 
35)  ;  the  stubborn  unbelief  of  Jerusalem  drew  from  him  loud 
wailing  (Lk.  xix.  41).  He  sighed  at  the  sight  of  human  suf- 
fering (Mk.  vii.  34)  and  "  sighed  deeply  "  over  men's  hardened 
unbelief  (viii.  12)  :  man's  inhumanity  to  man  smote  his  heart 
with  pain  (iii.  5).  But  it  is  only  with  reference  to  his  supreme 
sacrifice  that  his  mental  sufferings  are  emphasized.  This 
supreme  sacrifice  cast,  it  is  true,  its  shadows  before  it.  It  was 
in  the  height  of  his  ministry  that  our  Lord  exclaimed,  "  I  have 
a  baptism  to  be  baptized  with;  and  how  am  I  straitened  till 
it  be  accomplished"  (Lk.  xii.  50).®^     Floods  lie  before  him 

grateful  sense  of  high  privilege ;  and  that  he  had  a  blessed  consciousness  of 
fellowship  with  his  Father  who  sent  him,  during  the  whole  of  his 
pilgrimage  through  this  vale  of  tears?"  A.  E.  Garvie,  Studies  in  the 
Inner  Life  of  Jesus,  1907,  p.  318:  "Although  in  his  emotions,  varying 
notes  of  joy  or  grief  were  struck  by  the  changeful  experiences  of  his 
life  among  men,  yet  the  undertone  was  the  sense  of  a  great  good  to  be 
gained  by  the  endurance  of  a  great  sorrow."  G.  Matheson,  Studies  in 
the  Portrait  of  Christ,^°  1909,  I.  pp.  274  sq. :  "  We  speak  of  the  '  Man 
of  Sorrows ',  yet  I  think  the  deepest  note  in  the  soul  of  Jesus  was  not 
sorrow  but  joy."  C.  W.  Emmet,  DCG.  ii.  p.  607  b :  Christ  "  is  the  Man 
of  Sorrows,  yet  we  cannot  think  of  him  for  a  moment  as  an  unhappy 
man.  He  rather  gives  us  the  picture  of  serene  and  unclouded  happiness. 
Beneath  not  merely  the  outward  suffering,  but  the  profound  sorrow  of 
heart,  there  is  deeper  still  a  continual  joy,  derived  from  the  realized 
presence  of  his  Father  and  the  consciousness  that  he  is  doing  his  work. 
Unless  this  is  remembered,  the  idea  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows  is  sentiment- 
alized and  exaggerated."  F.  W.  Farrar,  The  Life  of  Christ,  1874,  i-  P- 
318;  ii.  p.  103. 

"'Hahn  in  loc:  "We  see  from  this  verse  that  Jesus  had  a  distinct 
foreknowledge  of  his  passion,  as  indeed  he  bears  witness  already  in 
ix.  22,  44.     There  meets  us  here,  however,  the  first  intimation  that  he 


72  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

under  which  he  is  to  be  submerged,®*  and  the  thought  of  pas- 
sing beneath  their  waters  "  straitens  "  his  soul.  The  term 
rendered  "  straitened  "  ^"^  imports  oppression  and  affliction,  and 
bears  witness  to  the  burden  of  anticipated  anguish  which  our 
Lord  bore  throughout  life.  The  prospect  of  his  sufferings,  it 
has  been  justly  said,  was  a  perpetual®*  Gethsemane;  and  how 
complete  this  foretaste  was  we  may  learn  from  the  incident 
recorded  in  Jno.  xii.  27,®®  although  this  antedated  Gethsemane, 
by  only  a  few, days.  *'  Now  is  my  soul®^  troubled,"  he  cries 
and  adds  a  remarkable  confession  of  shrinking  at  the  prospect 
of  death,  with,  however,  an  immediate  revulsion  to  his  habit- 
ual attitude  of  submission  to,  or  rather  of  hearty  embracing  of, 
his  Father's  will. — **And  what  shall  I  say?  Father,  save  me 
from  this  hour !  ®^     But  for  this  cause,  came  I  to  this  hour ! 

looked  forward  to  it  with  inner  dread  (Angst),  though  there  are  re- 
peated testimonies  to  this  later  (Cf.  xxii.  42;  Jno.  xii.  2;  Mt.  xxvi.  37)." 
Cf.  Mt.  XX.  22 :  "  Are  you  able  to  drink  the  cup  that  I  am  about  to 
drink?";  Mk.  x.  38:  "Are  you  able  to  drink  the  cup  that  I  drink?  or  to 
be  baptized  with  the  baptism  that  I  am  baptized  with  ?  " 

^Cf.  Meyer  on  Mk.  x.  38:  "The  cup  and  baptism  of  Jesus  represent 
martyrdom.  In  the  case  of  the  figure  of  baptism  .  .  .  the  point  of  the 
similitude  lies  in  the  being  submerged  .  .  .  Cf.  the  classical  use  of 
KaraSdeiv  and  fiarrlj/eiv,  to  plunge  (immerge)  into  sufferings,  sorrows,  and 
the  like." 

^  2uv^X"  -  see  G.  Heine,  Synonymik  etc.,  1898.  p.  149:  "  awdxofJMi, 
affligor,  laboro".  Cf.  Plummer  in  loc:  "How  am  I  oppressed,  afflicted, 
until  it  be  accomplished!  Comp.  viii.  37;  Jno.  v.  24.  The  prospect  of 
his  sufferings  was  a  perpetual  Gethsemane:  cf.  Jno.  xii.  27."  Weiss  in 
loc:  "And  how  I  am  afflicted  (bedrdngt)  until  it  be  accomplished! 
Expression  of  human  anxiety  in  prospect  of  the  sufferings  which  were 
to  come,  as  in  Gethsemane  and  Jno.  xii.  27." 

*"  The  ?«s  ^ov  emphasizes  the  whole  intervening  time :  "  I  am  strait- 
ened through  all  the  time  up  to  its  accomplishment." 

■*  Zahn  in  loc,  (p.  509)  :  "  The  essential  content  of  this  incident,  nar- 
rated by  John  alone,  is  the  same  that  the  Synoptics  record  in  the  prayer- 
conflict  in  Gethsemane,  which  John  passes  over  in  silence  when  his  nar- 
rative brings  him  to  Gethsemane   (xviii,  i-ii)". 

•"See  note  3. 

•^  This  prayer  is  frequently  taken  as  a  continuation  of  the  question.  So, 
e.  g.  Zahn.  (p.  507)  :  "  To  the  question  tI  etirw ,  the  words  which  follow : 
Tdrep,  <tQ<t6v  fie  iK  rijs  upas  rai^ri/s  cannot  bring  the  response;  for  the 
prayer  is  at  once  corrected  and  withdrawn  (  dXXA  kt\  )  ,  and  replaced 
by    an    absolutely    different    one    (verse    28).      The    first    prayer    shares 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE   OF   OUR  LORD  73 

Father,  glorify  Thy  name!"  He  had  come  into  the  world  to 
die;  but  as  he  vividly  realizes  what  the  death  is  which  he  is  to 
die,  there  rises  in  his  soul  a  yearning  for  deliverance,  only 
however,  to  be  at  once  repressed. ^^  The  state  of  mind  in  which 
this  sharp  conflict  went  on  is  described  by  a  term  the  fundamen- 
tal implication  of  which  is  agitation,  disquietude,  perplex- 
ity.^^ This  perturbation  of  soul  is  three  times  attributed  by 
John  to  Jesus  (xi.  33,  xii.  27,  xiii.  21),  and  always  as  express- 
ing the  emotions  which  conflict  with  death  stirred  in  him. 
The  anger  roused  in  him  by  the  sight  of  the  distress  into  which 
death  had  plunged  Mary  and  her  companions  (xi.  33)  ;  the  an- 
ticipation of  his  own  betrayal  to  death  (xiii.  21)  ;  the  clearly 
realized  approach  of  his  death  (xii.  2.y^  ;  threw  him  inwardly 
into  profound  agitation.  It  was  not  always  the  prospect  of 
his  own  death  (xii.  2^,  xiii.  21),  but  equally  the  poignant  real- 
ization of  what  death  meant  for  others  (xi.  33)  which  had  the 
power  thus  to  disquiet  him.  His  deep  agitation  was  clearly, 
therefore,  not  due  to  mere  recoil  from  the  physical  experience 
of  death,^^  though  even  such  a  recoil  might  be  the  expression 

therefore  in  the  interrogatory  inflection  of  rl  etvu  and  is  to  be  filled  out  by 
an  apa  (or  ^ )  etirw  derived  thence,  with  the  new  question,  '  Am  I  to  say, 
perhaps:  Father  save  me  from  this  hour?  ' "  Against  this,  however,  Wes- 
cott  forcibly  urges  "that  it  does  not  fall  in  with  the  parallel  clause, 
which  follows:  'Father  glorify  Thy  Name';  nor  with  the  intensity  of 
the  passage,  nor  yet  with  the  kindred  passages  in  the  Synoptics  (Mt. 
xxvi.  39  and  parallels)." 

^  Zahn  (p.  509)  :  "  Into  the  world  of  Jesus'  conceptions  the  possibility 
of  going  another  way  than  that  indicated  by  God  could  intrude;  that 
was  his  temptation;  but  his  will  repelled  it." 

^^  Tapd<Ta<a :  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik  etc.,  iii.  1879.  §  739.  6.  p.  516: 
Heine,  Synonymik  etc.,  1898.  p.  149. 

"  Cf.  Calvin  Com.  in  Harm.  Evang.,  on  Mt.  xxvi.  37 :  "  And  whence 
came  to  him  both  sorrow  and  anxiety  and  fear,  except  because  he  felt 
in  death  something  sadder  and  more  horrible  than  the  separation  of  the 
soul  and  body?  And  certainly  he  underwent  death,  not  merely  that  he 
might  move  from  earth  to  heaven,  but  rather  that  he  might  take  on 
himself  the  curse  to  which  we  were  liable,  and  deliver  us  from  it. 
His  horror  was  not,  then,  at  death  simpliciter,  as  a  passage  out  of  the 
world,  but  because  he  had  before  his  eyes  the  dreadful  tribunal  of  God, 
and  the  Judge  Himself  armed  with  inconceivable  vengeance;  it  was  our 
sins,  the  burden  of  which  he  had  assumed,  that  pressed  him  down  with 


74  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

not  so  much  of  a  terror  of  dying  as  of  a  repugnance  to  the  idea 
of  death.®'  Behind  death,  he  saw  him  who  has  the  power  of 
death,  and  that  sin  which  constitutes  the  sting  of  death.  His 
whole  being  revolted  from  that  final  and  deepest  humiliation, 
in  which  the  powers  of  evil  were  to  inflict  upon  him  the 
precise  penalty  of  human  sin.  To  bow  his  head  beneath  this 
stroke  was  the  last  indignity,  the  hardest  act  of  that  obedience 
which  it  was  his  to  render  in  his  servant-form,  and  which  we 
are  told  with  significant  emphasis,  extended  **  up  to  death  " 
(Phil.  ii.  8). 

So  profound  a  repugnance  to  death  and  all  that  death  meant, 
manifesting  itself  during  his  life,  could  not  fail  to  seize  upon 
him  with  peculiar  intensity  at  the  end.  If  the  distant  prospect 
of  his  sufferings  was  a  perpetual  Gethsemane  to  him,  the  im- 
mediate imminence  of  them  in  the  actual  Gethsemane  could 
not  fail  to  bring  with  it  that  "  awful  and  dreadful  torture  " 
which  Calvin  does  not  scruple  to  call  the  "  exordium  "  of  the 
pains  of  hell  themselves.®^  Matthew  and  Mark  almost  exhaust 
the  resources  of  language  to  convey  to  us  some  conception  of 

their  enormous  mass.  It  is,  then,  not  at  all  strange  if  the  dreadful 
abyss  of  destruction  tormented  him  grievously  with  fear  and  anguish." 

•^Thus  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward  reports  a  conversation  with  Mir.  Glad- 
stone ("  Notes  of  Conversation  with  Mr.  Gladstone,"  appended  to  the 
second  volume  of  Robert  Elsmere,  Westmoreland  ed.  191 1 )  :  "He  said 
that  though  he  had  seen  many  deaths,  he  had  never  seen  any  really 
peaceful.  In  all  there  had  been  much  struggle.  So  much  so  that  '  I  my- 
self have  conceived  what  I  will  not  call  a  terror  of  death,  but  a  re- 
pugnance from  the  idea  of  death.  It  is  the  rending  asunder  of  body  and 
soul,  the  tearing  apart  of  the  two  elements  of  our  nature, — for  I  hold  the 
body  to  be  an  essential  element  as  well  as  the  soul,  not  a  mere  sheath 
or  envelope.' " 

^Institutes.  II.  xvi.  12:  "If  anyone  now  ask,  whether  Christ  was  al- 
ready descending  into  hell  when  he  prayed  to  be  delivered  from  death, 
I  reply  that  this  was  the  exordium,  and  we  may  learn  from  it  what 
diros  et  horribiles  cruciatus  he  sustained  when  he  was  conscious  of 
standing  at  the  tribunal  of  God,  arraigned  on  our  account."  "  It  is  our 
wisdom,"  Calvin  remarks  in  the  context,  "  to  have  a  fit  sense  of  how 
much  our  salvation  cost  the  Son  of  God."  Cf.  the  discussion  in  the  same 
spirit  of  Thomas  Goodwin,  Works,  v.  pp.  278-288 :  "  For  it  is  God's  wrath 
that  is  hell,  as  it  is  his  favor  that  is  heaven"  (p.  281). 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  75 

our  Lord's  "  agony  "  ^^  as  an  early  interpolator  of  Luke  (Lk. 
xxii.  44)  calls  it,  in  this  dreadful  experienced^  The  anguish 
of  reluctance  which  constituted  this  "  agony  "  is  in  part  de- 
scribed by  them  both — they  alone  of  the  Evangelists  enter  into 
our  Lord's  feelings  here^ — by  a  term  the  primary  idea  of  which 
is  loathing,  aversion,  perhaps  not  unmixed  with  despondency.^^ 
This  term  is  adjoined  in  Matthew's  account  to  the  common 
word  for  sorrow,  in  which,  however,  here  the  fundamental 
element  of  pain,  distress,  is  prominent, ^'^^  so  that  we  may  per- 
haps render  Matthew's  account :  "  He  began  to  be  distressed 
and  despondent  "  (Mt.  xxvi.  37).  Instead  of  this  wide  word 
for  distress  of  mind,  Mark  employs  a  term  which  more  narrow- 
ly defines  the  distress  as  consternation, — if  not  exactly  dread, 
yet  alarmed  dismay  :^^^   "  He  began  to  be  appalled  and  despond- 

"'A7wj'(a:  see  G.  Heine,  Synonymik  etc.,  1898,  p.  189:  "Contest, 
quaking,  agitation  (and  anxiety  of  the  issue?)  Lk.  xxii.  44;  Luther,  'he 
grappled  with  death ',  Weizsacker,  *  he  struggled ',  Bengel ;  '  supreme 
grief  and  anguish.  It  properly  denotes  the  anguish  and  passion  of  the 
mind,  when  it  enters  upon  a  conflict  and  arduous  labor,  even  when  there 
is  no  doubt  of  a  good  issue'."  Plummer  in  loc:  "Field  contends  that 
fear  is  the  radical  notion  of  the  word.  The  passages  in  which  it  occurs 
in  LXX  confirm  this  view.  .  .  .  It  is  therefore  an  agony  of  fear  that 
is  apparently  to  be  understood."  It  would  be  better  to  say  consternation, 
appalled  reluctance. 

®*The  discussion  of  the  language  employed,  by  John  Pearson,  An  Expo- 
sition of  the  Creed,  (New  York,  1843),  p.  288,  note  t,  is  very  penetrating. 

^' M7]nov4(>} :  see  Heine,  Synonymik  etc.,  1898,  p.  148:  "  pavesco,  angor." 
Cf .  Lightf  oot,  on  Phil.  ii.  26 :  "  The  primary  idea  of  the  word  will  be 
loathing  and  discontent."  "  It  describes  the  confused,  restless,  half- 
distracted  state,  which  is  produced  by  physical  discouragement,  or  by 
mental  distress,  or  grief,  shame,  disappointment,  etc."  Lagrange  on 
Mk.  xviii.  33  :  "  seized  with  despondency  ".  Thomas  Goodwin  ( Works. 
V.  276)  :  "  so  that  we  see  Christ's  soul  was  sick  and  fainted,"  "  his  heart 
failed  him." 

^""'  Avtr^ofiai.:  see  note  38. 

"*  'EKdafip^o/xai  :  see  Hastings'  DCG.  i.  p.  48,  article  "  Amazement " ; 
G.  Heine,  Synonymik  etc.,  p.  149 :  It  "  is  used  of  those  whose  minds  are 
horror-struck  by  the  sight  or  thought  of  something  great  or  atrocious, 
not  merely  because  it  injects  fear,  but  because  the  mind  scarcely  takes 
in  its  magnitude."  Weiss  in  loc:  "  iKdafi^eiffdai  cannot  designate  the 
dread  (Angst)  but  only  the  horror  (Erschrecken)  which  attacks  Jesus 
at  the  thought  of  the  sufferings  which  stand  before  him."  Thomas  Good- 
win (Works,  V.  p.  275)  :    "  It  signifies  'to  be  in  horror'." 


h 


76  ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

ent "  (Mk.  xiv.  33).  Both  accounts  add  our  Lord's  own 
pathetic  declaration :  "  My  souP^^  is  exceeding  sorrowful  even 
unto  death  ",  the  central  term^^^  in  which  expresses  a  sorrow, 
or  perhaps  we  would  better  say,  a  mental  pain,  a  distress,  which 
hems  in  on  every  side,  from  which  there  is  therefore  no  es- 
cape; or  rather  (for  the  qualification  imports  that  this  hem- 
ming-in  distress  is  mortally  acute,  is  an  angiiish  of  a  sort  that 
no  issue  but  death  can  be  thought  of*^^) which  presses  in  and 
besets  from  every  side  and  therefore  leaves  no  place  for  de- 
fence. ■  The  extremity  of  this  agony  may  have  been  revealed, 
as  the  interpolator  of  Luke  tells  us,  by  sweat  dropping  like 
clots  of  blood  on  the  ground,  as  our  Lord  ever  more  impor- 
tunately urged  that  wonderful  prayer,  in  which  as  Bengel 
strikingly  says,^^^  the  horror  of  death  and  the  ardor  of  obed- 
ience met  (Lk.  xxii.  44).  This  interpolator  tells  us  (Lk.  xxii. 
43)  also  that  he  was  strengthened  for  the  conflict  by  an  angelic 
visitor,  and  we  may  well  suppose  that  had  it  not  been  for  some 
supernatural  strengthening  mercifully  vouchsafed  (cf.  Jno. 
xii.  27f.),  the  end  would  then  have  come.^^^  But  the  cup 
must  needs  be  drained  to  its  dregs,  and  the  final  drop  was  not 
drunk  until  that  cry  of  desertion  and  desolation  was  uttered,. 
"  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me?"  (Mt.  xxvii. 

'"*  See  note  3. 

*°*  UeplXviros.  J.  A.  Alexander :  "  Grieved  all  round,  encompassed,, 
shut  in  by  distress  on  every  side."  Morrison :  "  The  idea  is,  My  soul  is 
sorrowful  all  round  and  round." 

^"*  Swete's  "  a  sorrow  which  well-nigh  kills  "  is  too  weak :  the  meaning 
is,  it  is  a  sorrow  that  kills.  Thomas  Goodwin  (Works,  v.  p.  272)  dis- 
tinguishes thus:  "A  heaviness  unto  death,  not  extensive,  so  as  to  die,, 
but  intensive,  that  if  he  had  died,  he  could  not  have  suffered  more." 

""  On  Jno.  xii.  27.  The  evidence  derived  from  the  conflict  of  wills  in 
this  prayer  that  these  emotions  had  their  seat  in  our  Lord's  human  nature 
is  often  adverted  to, — e.  g.  by  J.  R.  Willis,  Hasting's  DCG.  i.  p.  17a : — 
"  The  thrice-repeated  prayer  of  Jesus  in  which  he  speaks  of  his  own  will 
as  distinct  from  but  distinctly  subordinate  to  his  Father's  adds  to  the  im- 
pression already  gained,  of  the  purely  human  feelings  exhibited  by  him  in 
this  struggle." 

^°*  Cf.  the  description  of  this  "  agony "  in  Heb.  v.  7 :  "  Who,  in  the 
days  of  his  flesh,  having  offered  up,  with  strong  crying  and  tears,  prayers 
and  supplications  unto  him  that  was  able  to  save  him  from  death". 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  -j-j 

46;  Mk.  XV.  34).^^^     This  culminating  sorrow  was  actually 
unto  death. 

In  these  supreme  moments  our  Lord  sounded  the  ultimate 
depths  of  human  anguish,  and  vindicated  on  the  score  of  the 
intensity  of  his  mental  sufferings  the  right  to  the  title  of 
Man  of  Sorrows.  The  scope  of  these  sufferings  was  also  very 
broad,  embracing  that  whole  series  of  painful  emotions  which 
runs  from  a  consternation  that  is  appalled  dismay,  through  a 
despondency  which  is  almost  despair,  to  a  sense  of  well-nigh 
complete  desolation.  In  the  presence  of  this  mental  anguish 
the  physical  tortures  of  the  crucifixion  retire  into  the  back- 
ground, and  we  may  well  believe  that  our  Lord,  though  he 
died  on  the  cross,  yet  died  not  of  the  cross,  but,  as  we  common- 
ly say,  of  a  broken  heart,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  strain  of  his 

^"^  Calvin,  Commentarius  in  Harmoniam  Evangelicarum,  on  Mt.  xxvii.  46: 
"  And  certainly  this  was  his  chief  conflict,  and  harder  than  all  his  other 
torments,  because  he  was  so  far  from  being  supported  in  his  straits  by 
his  Father's  help  or  favor,  that  he  felt  himself  in  some  measure  estranged. 
For  he  did  not  oflFer  his  body  only  in  payment  for  our  reconciliation 
with  God,  but  in  his  soul  also  he  bore  the  punishments  due  to  us;  and 
thus  became  in  very  fact  the  man  of  sorrows,  as  Isaiah  says  (liii.  3).  .  . 
For  that  Christ  should  make  satisfaction  for  us,  it  was  necessary  that 
he  be  sisted  as  guilty  before  the  tribunal  of  God.  But  nothing  is  more 
horrible  than  to  incur  the  judgment  of  God,  whose  wrath  is  worse  than 
all  deaths.  When,  then,  there  was  presented  to  Christ  a  kind  of  tempta- 
tion as  if  he  were  already  devoted  to  destruction,  God  being  his  enemy, 
he  was  seized  with  a  horror  in  which  a  hundred  times  all  the  mortals  in 
existence  would  have  been  overwhelmed;  but  he  came  out  of  it  victor, 
by  the  amazing  power  of  the  Spirit".  .  .  Also  Institutes  II.  xvi.  11: 
"  And  certainly  it  is  not  possible  to  imagine  a  more  terrible  abyss  than 
to  feel  yourself  forsaken  and  abandoned  (derelictwn  et  alienatum)  by 
God,  and,  when  you  call  upon  him,  not  to  be  heard  as  though  he  had 
conspired  for  your  destruction.  Christ  we  see  to  have  been  so  dejected 
(dejectiim)  as  to  be  constrained  in  the  urgency  of  his  distress  (urgente 
angusta)  to  cry  out,  'My  God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me?'" 
Calvin  adds  with  clear  insight  that  though  it  is  evident  that  this  cry 
was  ex  intimi  animi  angore  deductam,  yet  this  does  not  carry  with  it  the 
admission  that  "  God  was  ever  either  hostile  or  angry  with  him."  "  For 
how  could  he  be  angry  with  his  beloved  son,  in  whom  his  soul  delighted, 
or  how  could  Christ  appear  in  his  intercession  for  others  before  a  Father 
who  was  incensed  with  him?"  All  that  is  affirmed  is  that  "he  sustained 
the  weight  of  the  Divine  severity;  since,  smitten  and  afflicted  by  the  hand 
of  God,  he  experienced  all  the  signs  of  an  angry  and  punishing  God." 


78  ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

mental  suffering.*^®  The  sensitiveness  of  his  soul  to  affec- 
tional  movements,  and  the  depths  of  the  currents  of  feeling 
which  flowed  through  his  being,  are  thus  thrown  up  into  a 
very  clear  light.  And  yet  it  is  noticeable  that  whik  they  tore 
his  heart  and  perhaps,  in  the  end,  broke  the  bonds  which  bound 
his  fluttering  spirit  to  its  tenement  of  clay,  they  never  took  the 
helm  of  life  or  overthrew  either  the  judgment  of  his  calm 
understanding  or  the  completeness  of  his  perfect  trust  in  his 
Father.  If  he 'cried  out  in  his  agony  for  deliverance,  it  was 
always  the  cry  of  a  child  to  a  Father  whom  he  trusts  with  all 
and  always,  and  with  the  explicit  condition,  Howbeit,  not  what 
I  will  but  what  Thou  wilt.  If  the  sense  of  desolation  invades 
his  soul,  he  yet  confidingly  commends  his  departing  spirit 
into  his  Father's  hands  (Lk.  xxiii.  46).^^^    And  through  all 

"*That  his  death  was  due  to  psychical  rather  than  physical  causes  may 
be  the  reason  why  it  took  place  so  soon.  Jacobus  Baumann  in  a  most  dis- 
tressing book  (Die  Gemiitsart  Jesu,  1908,  p.  10)  appeals  to  the  rapidity 
with  which  Jesus  succumbed  to  death  as  evidence  of  a  certain  general 
lack  of  healthful  vigor  which  he  finds  in  Jesus :  "  With  this  liability  to 
easy  exhaustion,  his  quick  death  on  the  cross  agrees — a  thing  which  was 
unusual." 

*°*  Calvin,  Institutes  ii.  xv.  12  does  not  fail  to  remind  us  that  even  in 
our  Lord's  cry  of  desolation,  he  still  addresses  God  as  "My  God": 
"  although  he  suffered  agony  beyond  measure,  yet  he  does  not  cease  to 
call  God  his  God,  even  when  he  cries  out  that  he  is  forsaken  by  him." 
Then  at  large  in  the  Comm.  in  Harm.  Evang.,  on  Mt.  xxvii.  46 :  "  We  have 
already  pointed  out  the  difference  between  natural  feeling  and  the  knowl- 
edge of  faith.  There  was  nothing  to  prevent  Christ  from  mentally  con- 
ceiving that  God  had  deserted  him,  according  to  the  dictation  of  his 
natural  feeling,  and  at  the  same  time  retaining  his  faith  that  God  was 
well-disposed  to  him.  And  this  appears  with  sufficient  clearness  from  the 
two  clauses  of  the  complaint.  For  before  he  gives  expression  to  his 
trial,  he  begins  by  saying  that  he  flees  to  God  as  his  God  and  so  he 
bravely  repels  by  this  shield  of  faith  that  appearance  of  dereliction  which 
presented  itself  in  opposition.  In  short,  in  this  dire  anguish  his  faith 
was  unimpaired,  so  that  in  act  of  deploring  that  he  was  forsaken,  he  still 
trusted  in  the  present  help  of  God."  Similarly  Thomae  Goodwin 
{Works.  V.  p.  283)  :  "And  both  these  differing  apprehensions  of  his  did 
Christ  accordingly  express  in  that  one  sentence,  '  My  God,  My  God,  why 
hast  Thou  forsaken  me?'  He  speaks  it  as  apprehending  himself  a  son 
still  united  to  God  and  beloved  by  him,  and  yet  forsaken  by  him  as 
a  surety  accursed." 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE   OF   OUR   LORD  79 

his  agony  his  demeanor  to  his  disciples,  his  enemies,  his 
judges,  his  executioners  is  instinct  with  calm  self-mastery. 
The  cup  which  was  put  to  his  lips  was  bitter :  none  of  its  bit- 
terness was  lost  to  him  as  he  drank  it:  but  he  drank  it;  and 
he  drank  it  as  his  own  cup  which  it  was  his  own  will  (because 
it  was  his  Father's  will)  to  drink.  ''  The  cup  which  the  Father 
hath  given  me,  shall  I  not  drink  it?  "  (Jno.  xviii.  11), — it  was 
in  this  spirit,  not  of  unwilling  subjection  to  unavoidable  evil, 
but  of  voluntary  endurance  of  unutterable  anguish  for  adequate 
ends,  that  he  passed  into  and  through  all  his  sufferings.  His 
very  passion  was  his  own  action.  He  had  power  to  lay  down 
his  life ;  and  it  was  by  his  own  power  that  he  laid  down  his  life, 
and  by  his  own  power  that  he  trod  the  whole  pathway  of 
suffering  which  led  up  to  the  formal  act  of  his  laying  down 
his  life.  Nowhere  is  he  the  victim  of  circumstances  or  the 
helpless  sufferer.  Everywhere  and  always,  it  is  he  who  pos- 
sesses the  mastery  both  of  circumstances  and  of  himself. ^^^ 
The  completeness  of  Jesus'  trust  in  God  which  is  manifested 
in  the  unconditional,  "  Nevertheless,  not  as  I  will  but  as  Thou 
wilt  "  of  the  "  agony  ",  and  is  echoed  in  the  **  Father,  into 
Thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit "  of  the  cross,  finds  endless 
illustration  in  the  narratives  of  the  Evangelists.  Trust  is  never, 
however,  explicitly  attributed  to  him  in  so  many  words. ^^^  Ex- 
cept in  the  scoffing  language  with  which  he  was  assailed  as  he 
hung  on  the  cross :  "  He  trusteth  in  God ;  let  him  deliver  him 
now  if  he  desireth  him"  (Mt.  xxvii.  43),  the  term  "trust" 
is  never  so  much  as  mentioned  in  connection  with  his  relations 

""  Cf.  the  remarks  of  H.  N.  Bernard,  The  Mental  Characteristics  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  1888,  pp.  257sq. 

"^  Cf .  Heb.  ii.  13.  In  Jno.  ii.  24  we  are  told  that  Jesus  "  did  not  trust 
himself  (  erlaTevaev  )"  to  those  in  Jerusalem  who  believed  on  him  when 
they  saw  the  signs  which  he  did.  Cf.  Liitgert,  as  cited,  p.  63 :  "  From 
this  the  relation  of  Jesus  to  God  receives  a  two-fold  form :  on  the  one  side 
it  is  absolute  trust,  a  certainty  of  receiving  everything,  a  wish  and  prayer 
directed  to  God,  which  leads  to  a  complete  exaltation  above  nature;  but 
this  side  of  his  faith  Jesus  makes  use  of  only  for  men.  By  virtue  of  this 
his  confidence  he  fulfils  the  wish  of  all  who  ask  him.  In  this  use  of  his 
faith  he  expresses  his  love  for  men.  The  faith  of  Jesus  has  however  also 
another  side;  it  is  bowing,  renunciation  and  subordination  to  God,  This 
side  of  his  faith  Jesus  employs  only  for  himself.    The  story  of  the  tempta- 


8o  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

with  God.  Nor  is  the  term  "  faith  ".^^^  Nor  indeed  are 
many  of  what  we  may  call  the  fundamental  religious  affections 
directly  attributed  to  him,  although  he  is  depicted  as  literally 
living,  moving  and  having  his  being  in  God.  His  profound 
feeling  of  dependence  on  God,  for  example,  is  illustrated  in 
every  conceivable  way,  not  least  strikingly  in  the  constant 
habit  of  prayer  which  the  Evangelists  ascribe  to  him.^^^  But 
we  are  never  directly  told  that  he  felt  this  dependence  on  God 
or  "feared  Gbd".  or  felt  the  emotions  "of  reverence  and  awe 
in  the  divine  presence. ^^*    We  are  repeatedly  told  that  he  re- 

tion  shows  that  Jesus  uses  this  renunciation  in  order  to  glorify  God." 
(Further,  p.  89). 

^"Cf.  A.  Schlatter,  Die  Theologie  des  Neuen  Testaments,  1909,  p.  317: 
"  Perfect  love  involves  perfect  trust,  and  is  not  thinkable  without  it. 
Yet  though  the  disciples  have  declared  that  Jesus  empowered  them  for 
faith  and  demanded  faith  of  them,  they  have  said  nothing  of  Jesus'  own 
faith.  Even  John  has  said  nothing  of  it  although  he  has  rich  formulas 
for  the  piety  of  Jesus  and  speaks  of  faith  as  the  act  by  which  Jesus  unites 
his  disciples  with  himself.  The  notion  of  faith  is  introduced  by  him  only 
with  respect  to  Jesus'  relations  to  men,  '  He  trusted  himself  not  to  them ' ; 
while,  of  Jesus'  relation  to  God,  he  says  *  He  heard  him,  loved  him,  knew 
him,  saw  him,'  but  not,  *  He  believed  on  him '  ( Jno.  ii.  24,  viii.  26,  40, 
xi.  10,  xiv.  31,  X.  15,  xvii.  25,  iii.  11,  vi."  46,  viii.  35).  As  a  rule  for  the 
conduct  of  the  disciples  toward  Jesus  is  expressly  drawn  from  Jesus' 
conduct  towards  the  Father,  the  formula  '  Believe  in  me  as  I  believe  in  the 
Father'  might  have  been  expected.    But  it  does  not  occur." 

""Mk.  i.  35,  vi.  46,  xiv.  32,  35;  Mt.  xiv.  23,  xix.  13,  xxvi.  36-39,  42-44; 
Lk.  iii.  21,  V.  16,  vi.  12,  ix.  18-28,  xi.  i,  xxii.  41,  44.  Cf.  Liitgert,  as  cited, 
p.  90 :  "  Also  in  the  expression  of  his  love  to  God,  Jesus  fulfilled,  accord- 
ing to  the  Evangelists,  his  own  commandment,  not  to  exhibit  his  piety 
openly,  but  to  practice  it  in  secret.  The  Evangelists  therefore  designedly 
lay  stress  on  Jesus'  seeking  solitude  for  prayer.  The  communion  of  Jesus 
with  God,  the  '  inner  life '  of  Jesus,  falls  accordingly  outside  their  nar- 
rative. The  relation  of  Jesus  with  God  is  not  discussed,  his  com- 
munion with  God  remains  a  secret."  This  is  spoken  of  the  Synoptics  who 
alone  tells  us  of  Jesus'  habit  of  prayer  (irpocreiJxoMat,  irpoaevx'fi  do  not  occur 
in  John). 

"*Cf.  Heb.  v.  7:  "having  been  heard  for  his  godly  fear  (e^Xd/Seia  ) ", 
i.  e.  for  his  reverent  and  submissive  awe,  "  that  religious  fear  of  God  and 
anxiety  not  to  offend  him  which  manifests  itself  in  voluntary  and  humble 
submission  to  his  will"  (Delitzsch  in  loc).  Davidson  in  loc:  "The 
clause  throws  emphasis  on  the  Son's  reverent  submission."  Humanitarian 
writers  debate  whether  "  fear  "  of  God  is  to  be  attributed  to  Jesus.    Well- 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  8l 

turned  thanks  to  God/^^  but  we  are  never  told  in  so  many- 
words  that  he  experienced  the  emotion  of  gratitude.  The  nar- 
rative brings  Jesus  before  us  as  acting  under  the  impulse  of  all 
the  religious  emotions ;  but  it  does  not  stop  to  comment  upon  the 
emotions  themselves. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  more  common  emotions  of  human 

hausen  {Israel,  und  jud.  Geschichte^,  p.  383,  expanded  in  Skizzen  und 
Vorarheiten,  i.  1884,  p.  98)  represents  him  as  passing  his  life  in  fear  of 
the  judge  of  all :  "  He  feels  the  reality  of  God  dominating  life,  he 
breathes  in  the  fear  of  the  Judge  who  demands  account  of  every  idle  word 
and  has  power  to  destroy  body  and  soul  in  hell."  Similarly  Bousset 
(Jesus,  1904,  pp.  54,  99,  E.  T.  pp.  112,  203)  speaks  of  him  as  learning 
by  his  own  experience  "  that  God  is  terrible  (furchtbar)  and  that  an  awful 
darkness  and  dread  encircles  him  even  for  those  who  stand  nearest  to 
him,"  and  as  "  sharing  to  the  bottom  of  his  soul "  "  the  fear  of  that  al- 
mighty God  who  has  power  to  damn  body  and  soul  together,"  which  he 
"  has  stamped  upon  the  hearts  of  his  disciples  with  such  marvellous 
energy."  Karl  Thieme,  however,  from  the  same  humanitarian  standpoint 
(Die  christliche  Demut,  i.  1906,  pp.  109  sq.)  repels  such  representations 
as  without  historical  ground :  we  may  historically  ascribe  reverential  awe 
(Ehrfurcht)  to  Jesus  but  not  fear  (Furcht).  "Of  course  he  compre- 
hended God  in  the  whole  overtowering  majesty  of  his  being,  and  adored 
his  immeasurable  exaltation  in  the  deepest  reverence  (Ehrfurcht)." 
But  "  we  may  maintain  in  Jesus'  case  an  altogether  fearless  (furchtlos) 
assurance  of  God  and  self."  "  We  cannot  speak  of  a  '  fear  of  the  Judge ' 
in  Jesus'  case,  because  it  does  not  well  harmonize  with  his  faith  in  his 
own  judgeship  of  the  world.  But  we  can  no  doubt  call  the  intensity  of 
his  obedience,  the  living  sense  of  responsibility  in  which  he  made  it  his 
end,  his  whole  life  through,  to  walk,  in  all  his  motions,  with  the  utmost 
exactness  according  to  the  will  of  God  as  the  almighty  majestic  Lord,  his 
fear  of  God."  Liitgert  (Die  Liebe  im  Neuen  Testament,  1895,  pp.  88,  89) 
points  to  Jesus'  turning  to  the  Father  in  Gethsemane  and  on  the  cross, 
not  as  something  terrible  (furchtbar)  but  with  loving  confidence,  as 
decisive  in  the  case.  On  the  place  of  'the  fear  of  God'  in  Christian 
piety,  see  Lutgert's  article  Die  Furcht  Gottes,  published  in  the  Theo- 
logische  Studien,  presented  to  Martin  Kahler  on  6  January  1905  (Leipzig, 
1905,  pp.  163  sq.). 

^"'Ei/xapto'T^w  ,  Jno.  xi.  41;  Mt.  xv.  36;  Mk  viii.  6;  Jno.  vi.  11,  23; 
xxvi.  27 ;  Mk  xiv.  23 ;  Lk.  xxii,  17,  19 ;  i  Cor.  xi.  24.  On  the  word, 
see  Lobeck,  Phrynicus,  p.  18 ;  Rutherford,  The  New  Phrynicus,  p.  69.  'E|o/io 
Xoyhfiai,  Mt.  xi.  25 ;  Lk.  x.  21 ;  R.  V.  mg.  *  praise ' :  so  Meyer,  Hahn, 
Zahn,  also  Kennedy,  Sources  of  N.  T.  Greek,  p.  118.  Fritzsche:  "  Gra- 
tias  tibi  ago,  quod ".  Better,  Plummer :  "acknowledge  openly  to  thine 
honour,  give  thee  praise."     Similarly  J.  A.  Alexander. 


\ 


g2  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

life.  The  narrative  is  objective  throughout  in  its  method. 
On  two  occasions  we  are  told  that  Jesus  felt  that  occurrences 
which  he  witnessed  were  extraordinary  and  experienced  the 
appropriate  emotion  of  "wonder"  regarding  them  (Mt.  viii. 
lo;  Lk.  vii  9;  Mk.  vi.  6).^^**  Once  "  desire  "  is  attributed  to 
him  (Lk.  xxii.  15), — he  had  "  set  his  heart  ",  as  we  should  say, 
upon  eating  the  final  passover  with  his  disciples — the  term  used 
emphasizing  the  affectional  movement. ^^^  And  once  our  Lord 
speaks  of  himself  as  being  conceiv^ibly  the  subject  of 
"  shame  ",  the  reference  being,  however,  rather  to  a  mode  of 
action  consonant  with  the  emotion,  than  to  the  feeling  itself 
(Mk.  viii.  38;  Lk.  iv.  26).^^^  Besides  these  few  chance  sugges- 
tions, there  are  none  of  the  numerous  emotions  that  rise  and 
fall  in  the  human  soul,  which  happen  to  be  explicitly  attributed 
to  our  Lord.^^^  The  reader  sees  them  all  in  play  in  his 
vividly  narrated  life-experiences,  but  he  is  not  told  of  them. 

We  have  now  passed  in  review  the  whole  series  of  explicit 
attributions  to  our  Lord  in  the  Gospels  of  specific  emotional 
movements.  It  belongs  to  the  occasional  manner  in  which  these 
emotional  movements  find  record  in  the  narrative,  that  it  is 
only  our  Lord's  most  noticeable  displays  of  emotion  which  are 
noted.     One  of  the  effects  of  this  is  to  give  to  his  emotions 

"*  Qavfid^ca:  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik  etc.,  iv.  §  165,  pp.  i84sq. :  "  it 
is  perfectly  generally  '  to  wonder '  or  'to  admire ',  and  is  distinguished 
from  dafx^elv  precisely  as  the  German  sich  wundern,  or  hewundern  is  from 
staunen:  that  is,  what  has  seized  on  us  in  the  case  of  davfjA^eiv  is  the 
extraordinary  nature  of  the  thing  while  in  the  case  of  dan^eiv  it  is  the  un- 
expectedness and  suddenness  of  the  occurrence."  Cf.  Art.  "  Amazement " 
in  Hasting's  DCG.  I,  pp.  47,  48. 

"'  'Eiridvfda:  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik,  III,  §  145,  3,  5;  146,  8;  and  cf. 
J.  C.  Lambert,  art.  "Desire"  in  Hastings'  DCG,  I,  453, 

"''Eiraiax^vofmi :  see  Schmidt,  Synonymik,  III,  §  140;  Trench  Synonyms, 
§§  19,  20.  On  Shame  in  our  Lord's  life  cf.  James  Stalker,  Imago  Christi, 
p.  190,  and  Thieme,  as  above,  p.  iii. 

"•When  Wellhausen  (Geschichte  Israels,'  p.  346)  says,  "There  broke 
out  with  him  from  time  to  time  manifestations  of  enthusiasm,  but  to  these 
elevations  of  mood  there  corresponded  also  depressions," — he  is  going 
beyond  the  warrant  of  the  narrative,  which  pictures  Jesus  rather  as  sin- 
gularly equable  in  his  demeanor.     Cf.  Liitgert,  as  cited,  p.  103. 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR   LORD  83 

as  noted  the  appearance  of  peculiar  strength,  vividness  and 
completeness.  This  serves  to  refute  the  notion  which  has  been 
sometimes  advanced  under  the  influence  of  the  "  apathetic  " 
conception  of  virtue,  that  emotional  movements  never  ran  their 
full  course  in  him  as  we  experience  them,  but  stopped  short 
at  some  point  in  their  action  deemed  the  point  of  dignity. ^^^ 
In  doing  so,  it  serves  equally,  however,  to  carry  home  to  us  a 
very  vivid  impression  of  the  truth  and  reality  of  our  Lord's 
human  nature.  What  we  are  given  is,  no  doubt,  only  the  high 
lights.  But  it  is  easy  to  fill  in  the  picture  mentally  with  the 
multitude  of  emotional  movements  which  have  not  found 
record  just  because  they  were  in  no  way  exceptional.  Here 
obviously  is  a  being  who  reacts  as  we  react  to  the  incitements 
which  arise  in  daily  intercourse  with  men,  and  whose  reactions 
bear  all  the  characteristics  of  the  corresponding  emotions  we 
are  familiar  with  in  our  experience. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  well  explicitly  to  note  that  our  Lord's 
emotions  fulfilled  themselves,  as  ours  do,  in  physical  reactions. 
He  who  hungered  (Mt.  iv.  2),  thirsted  (Jno.  xix.  20),  was 
weary  (Jno.  iv.  6),  who  knew  both  physical  pain  and  pleasure, 
expressed  also  in  bodily  affections  the  emotions  that  stirred  his 
soul.  That  he  did  so  is  sufiiciently  evinced  by  the  simple  cir- 
cumstance that  these  emotions  were  observed  and  recorded. 
But  the  bodily  expression  of  the  emotions  is  also  frequently 
expressly  attested.  Not  only  do  we  read  that  he  wept  (Jno. 
xi.  35)  and  wailed  (Lk.  xix.  41),  sighed  (Mk.  vii.  34)  and 
groaned  (Mk.  viii.  12)  ;  but  we  read  also  of  his  angry  glare 
(Mk.  iii.  5),  his  annoyed  speech  (Mk.  x.  14),  his  chiding 
words  (e.  g.  Mk.  iii.  12),  the  outbreaking  ebullition  of  his 
rage  (e.  g.  Jno.  xi.  33,  38)  ;  of  the  agitation  of  his  bearing 
when  under  strong  feeling  (Jno.  xi.  35),  the  open  exultation 

^^  Origen,  for  example,  in  his  comment  on  Mt.  xxvi.  zi  lays  great 
weight  on  the  words :  "  He  began  to  be  ",  in  the  sense  that  the  implica- 
tion is  that  he  never  completed  the  act.  Jesus  only  entered  upon  these 
emotions,  but  did  not  suffer  them  in  their  fulness.  He  was  subject  to 
Tpoirddeia  but  not  to  the  irddri  themselves.  Similarly  Cornelius  a  Lapide 
wishes  us  to  believe  that  Christ  instead  of  "  passions "  had  only  "  pro- 
passiones  libere  assumptae".  For  a  modern  writer  approaching  this  posi- 
tion, see  John  Hutchison,  The  Monthly  Interpreter,  1885,  II,  p.  288. 


I 


84  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

of  his  joy  (Lk.  x.  21),  the  unrest  of  his  movements  in  the 
face  of  anticipated  evils  (Mt.  xxvii.  37),  the  loud  cry  which 
was  wrung  from  him  in  his  moment  of  desolation  (Mt.  xxvii. 
46).  Nothing  is  lacking  to  make  the  impression  strong  that 
we  have  before  us  in  Jesus  a  human  being  like  ourselves. 

It  is  part  of  the  content  of  this  impression,  that  Jesus  ap- 
pears before  us  in  the  light  of  the  play  of  his  emotions  as  a 
distinct  human  being,  with  his  own  individuality  and — shall 
we  not  say  itP-^-even  temperament.  It  is,  indeed,  sometimes 
suggested  that  the  Son  of  God  assumed  at  the  incarnation  not 
a  human  nature  but  human  nature,  that  is  to  say,  not  human 
nature  as  manifesting  itself  in  an  individual,  but  human  nature 
in  general,  "  generic  *'  or  "  universal  "  human  nature.  The 
idea  which  it  is  meant  to  express,  is  not  a  very  clear  one,^^^  and 
is  apparently  only  a  relic  of  the  discountenanced  fiction  of  the 
"  real  "  existence  of  universals.    In  any  case  the  idea  receives 

"^  It  is  not  clear,  for  example,  precisely  what  is  meant  by  A.  J.  Mason 
(The  Conditions  of  our  Lord's  Life  on  Earth,  1896,  p.  46),  when  he 
says :  "  When  Christ  is  called  *  a  Man '  it  sounds  as  if  he  were  consid- 
ered only  an  incidental  specimen  of  the  race,  Hke  one  of  ourselves,  and  not, 
as  he  is  in  fact,  the  universal  Man,  in  whom  the  whole  of  human  nature  is 
gathered  up, — the  representative  and  head  of  the  entire  species."  What 
is  a  "  universal  man  "  ?  And  how  could  "  the  whole  of  human  nature  " 
be  "  gathered  up  "  in  Jesus,  except  representatively, — which  is  not  what 
is  meant — unless  universal  human  nature  is  an  entity  with  "real  exist- 
ence "?  And  if  even  Mason  is  unintelligible,  what  shall  we  say  of  a  writer 
like  J.  P.  Lange  (Christliche  Dogmatik;  Zweiter  Theil;  Positive  Dog- 
matik,  1881,  pp.  770-771)  :  "The  man  in  the  God-man  is  not  an  individ- 
ual man  of  itself,  but  the  man  which  takes  mankind  up  into  itself,  as 
mankind  has  taken  nature  up  into  itself.  And  so  it  coalesces  with  the 
divine  self-limitation,  as  the  Son  of  God  unites  with  the  human  limitation. 
The  man  in  the  God-man  embraces  the  eternal  Becoming  of  the  whole 
world  as  it  goes  forth  from  God  according  to  the  energy  of  his  nature. 
So  it  is  also  radically  the  real  passage  of  the  Becoming  through  the  per- 
fected Becoming  into  the  absolute  Being,  and  therefore  the  proper  organ 
of  the  Son  of  God  according  to  his  ideal  entrance  into  the  absolute  Be- 
coming. It  is  the  limited  unlimitation  which  coalesces  with  the  unlimited 
limitation  of  the  divine  man,  who  takes  up  into  itself  the  human  God."  It 
is  only  fair  to  bear  in  mind,  however,  that  this  statement  is  partly  relieved 
of  its  unintelligibility  when  it  is  read  in  connection  with  Lange's  expo- 
sition of  the  ideas  of  man  and  the  God-man  in  his  Philosophical  Dog- 
matics, which,  in  his  system,  precedes  his  Positive  Dogmatics. 


ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  85 

no  support  from  a  survey  of  the  emotional  life  of  our  Lord  as 
it  is  presented  to  us  in  the  Evangelical  narratives.  The  im- 
pression of  a  distinct  individuality  acting  in  accordance  with 
its  specific  character  as  such,  which  is  left  on  the  mind  by  these 
narratives  is  very  strong.  Whether  our  Lord's  human  nature 
is  "  generic  "  or  "  individual  '\  it  certainly. — the  Evangelists 
being  witness — functioned  in  the  days  of  his  flesh  as  if  it  were 
individual;  and  we  have  the  same  reason  for  pronouncing 
it  an  individual  human-nature  that  we  have  for  pronouncing 
such  any  human  nature  of  whose  functioning  we  have  knowl- 
edge.*^^ 

This  general  conclusion  is  quite  independent  of  the  precise 
determination  of  the  peculiarity  of  the  individuality  which  our 
Lord  exhibits.  He  himself,  on  a  great  occasion,  sums  up  his 
individual  character  (in  express  contrast  with  other  individ- 
uals) in  the  declaration,  "  I  am  meek  and  lowly  of  heart." 
And  no  impression  was  left  by  his  life-manifestation  more 
deeply  imprinted  upon  the  consciousness  of  his  followers  than 
that  of  the  noble  humility  of  his  bearing.  It  was  by  the  "  meek- 
ness and  gentleness  of  Christ "  that  they  encouraged  one 
another  to  a  life  becoming  a  Christian  man's  profession  (2 
Cor.  X.  I )  ;  for  "  the  patience  of  Christ "  that  they  prayed 
in  behalf  of  one  another  as  a  blessing  worthy  to  be  set  in  their 
aspirations  by  the  side  of  the  "  love  of  God  "  (2  Thess.  iii. 
5 ) ;  to  the  imitation  of  Christ's  meek  acceptance  of  undeserved 
outrages  that  they  exhorted  one  another  in  persecution — "  be- 
cause Christ  also  suffered  for  sin,  leaving  you  an  example, 
that  ye  should  follow  in  his  steps;  who  did  no  sin,  neither 
was  guile  found  in  his  mouth;  who,  when  he  was  reviled, 
reviled  not  again;  when  he  suffered,  threatened  not;  but  com- 
mitted himself  to  him  that  judgeth  righteously"   (i   Pet.  ii. 

^^ Cf.  A.  B.  Bruce,  The  Humiliation  of  Christ'  1881,  pp.  262,  and  pp. 
427-428:  "I  see  in  him  traces  of  strongly  marked,  though  not  one-sided 
individuality  .  .  .  Generally  speaking,  the  reality,  not  ideality,  of  the 
humanity  is  the  thing  that  lies  on  the  surface ;  although  the  latter  is  not  to 
be  denied,  nor  the  many-sidedness  which  is  adduced  in  proof  of  it  by 
Martensen  and  others."     Cf.   Martensen,   Christian  Dogmatics,  ET,  pp. 


I 


86  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

21-23).  Nevertheless  we  cannot  fix  upon  humility  as  in  such 
a  sense  our  Lord's  "  quality "  as  to  obscure  in  him  other 
qualities  which  might  seem  to  stand  in  conflict  with  it;  much 
less  as  carrying  with  it  those  '*  defects  "  which  are  apt  to 
accompany  it  when  it  appears  as  the  "  quality  "  of  others. 
Meekness  in  our  Lord  was  not  a  weak  bearing  of  evils,  but  a 
strong  forbearance  in  the  presence  of  evil.  It  was  not  so 
much  a  fundamental  characteristic  of  a  nature  constitutionally 
averse  to  asserting  itself,  as  a  voluntary  "Submission  of  a  strong 
person  bent  on  an  end.  It  did  not,  therefore,  so  much  give 
way  before  indignation  when  the  tension  became  too  great  for 
it  to  bear  up  against  it,  as  coexist  with  a  burning  indignation 
at  all  that  was  evil,  in  a  perfect  equipoise  which  knew  no 
wavering  to  this  side  or  that.  It  was,  in  a  word,  only  the  man- 
ifestation in  him  of  the  mind  which  looks  not  on  its  own 
things  but  the  things  of  others  (Phil.  ii.  5),  and  therefore 
spells  "  mission  ",  not  "  temperament  ".  We  cannot  in  any 
case  define  his  temperament,  as  we  define  other  men's  tem- 
peraments, by  pointing  to  his  dominant  characteristics  or 
the  prevailing  direction  of  his  emotional  discharges. ^^^  In 
this  sense  he  had  no  particular  temperament,  and  it  might 
with  truth  be  said  that  his  human  nature  was  generic,  not 
individual.  The  mark  of  his  individuality  was  harmonious 
completeness :  of  him  alone  of  men,  it  may  be  truly  said  that 
nothing  that  is  human  was  alien  to  him,  and  that  all  that  is 
human  manifested  itself  in  him  in  perfect  proportion  and 
balance. 

"•  E.  P.  Boys- Smith,  Hastings'  DCG,  H,  p.  163a :  "  The  fulness,  balance, 
and  unity  of  the  Master's  nature  make  it  impracticable  to  use  in  his  case 
what  is  the  commonest  and  readiest  way  of  portraying  a  person.  This  is 
to  throw  into  the  fore-ground  of  the  picture  those  features  in  which  the 
character  is  exceptionally  strong,  or  those  deficiencies  which  mark  it 
off  from  others,  and  to  leave  as  an  unelaborated  back-ground  the  common 
stuff  of  human  nature.  Thus,  by  sketching  the  idiosyncracies,  and  casting 
a  few  high  lights,  the  man  is  set  forth  sufficiently.  But  what  traits  are 
there  in  the  Lord  Jesus  which  stand  out  because  more  highly  developed  than 
other  features?  Nothing  truly  human  was  wanting  to  him,  nothing  was 
exaggerated.  The  fact  which  distinguished  him  from  all  others  was  his 
completeness  at  all  points.    .    ." 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF   OUR  LORD  87 

The  series  of  emotions  attributed  to  our  Lord  in  the  Evan- 
gelical narrative,  in  their  variety  and  their  complex  but  har- 
monious interaction,  illustrate,  though,  of  course,  they  cannot 
of  themselves  demonstrate,  this  balanced  comprehensiveness 
of  his  individuality.  Various  as  they  are,  they  do  not  inhibit 
one  another;  compassion  and  indignation  rise  together  in  his 
soul;  joy  and  sorrow  meet  in  his  heart  and  kiss  each  other. 
Strong  as  they  are — not  mere  joy  but  exultation,  not  mere 
irritated  annoyance  but  raging  indignation,  not  mere  passing 
pity  but  the  deepest  movements  of  compassion  and  love,  not 
mere  surface  distress  but  an  exceeding  sorrow  even  unto  death, 
— they  never  overmaster  him.  He  remains  ever  in  control. ^^* 
Calvin  is,  therefore,  not  without  justification,  when,  telling 
us^^^  that  in  taking  human  affections  our  Lord  did  not  take 
inordinate  affections,  but  kept  himself  even  in  his  passions  in 
subjection  to  the  will  of  the  Father,  he  adds :  "  In  short,  if 
you  compare  his  passions  with  ours,  they  will  differ  not  less 
than  the  clear  and  pure  water,  flowing  in  a  gentle  course,  differs 
from  dirty  and  muddy  foam."  ^^^     The  figure  which  is  here 

'"^T.  B.  Kilpatrick,  Hastings'  DCG,  L  pp.  294b-295a:  "Yet  we  are 
not  to  impute  to  him  any  unemotional  callousness.  He  never  lost  his 
calmness;  but  he  was  not  always  calm.  He  repelled  temptation  with  deep 
indignation  (Mk.  viii.  33).  Hypocrisy  aroused  him  to  a  flame  of  judgment 
(Mk.  iii  5,  xi.  15-17;  Mt.  xxiii.  1-36).  Treachery  shook  him  to  the  center 
of  his  being  (Jno.  xiii,  21).  The  waves  of  human  sorrow  broke  over  him 
with  a  greater  grief  than  wrung  the  bereaved  sisters  (Jno.  xi.  33-35). 
There  were  times  when  he  bore  an  unknown  agony  .  .  .  Yet  whatever  his 
soul's  discipline  might  be,  he  never  lost  his  self-control,  was  never  dis- 
tracted or  afraid,  but  remained  true  to  his  mission  and  to  his  faith. 
He  feels  anger,  or  sorrow,  or  trouble,  but  these  emotions  are  under  the 
control  of  a  will  that  is  one  with  the  divine  will,  and  therefore  are  com- 
prehended within  the  perfect  peace  of  a  mind  stayed  on  God."  There  is 
a  good  deal  of  rhetorical  exaggeration  in  the  language  in  which  the  phe- 
nomena are  here  described;  but  for  the  essence  of  the  matter  the  repre- 
sentation is  sound :  our  Lord  is  always  master  of  himself. 

"*  Com.  on  Jno.  xi.  35. 

""Fr.  Gumlich.  TSK,  1862,  p.  285  note  b,  calls  on  us  to  "guard  our- 
selves from  "  Calvin's  statement  that  "  his  feelings  differ  from  ours  as  a 
pure,  untroubled,  powerful  but  onflowing  stream  from  restless,  foaming, 
muddy  waves."  But  do  not  his  sinless  emotions  differ  precisely  so  from 
our  sinful  passions? 


88  ON  THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

employed  may,  no  doubt,  be  unduly  pressed  i^^'^  but  Calvin  has 
no  intention  of  suggesting  doubt  of  either  the  reality  or  the 
strength  of  our  Lord's  emotional  reactions.  He  expressly 
turns  away  from  the  tendency  from  which  even  an  Augustine 
is  not  free,  to  reduce  the  afifectional  life  of  our  Lord  to  a  mere 
show,  and  commends  to  us  rather,  as  Scriptural,  the  simplicity 
which  affibns  that  "  the  Son  of  God  having  clothed  himself 
with  our  flesh,  of  his  own  accord  clothed  himself  also 
with  human  feelings,  so  that  he  did  not  differ  at  all  from 
his  brethren,  sin  only  excepted."  He  is  only  solicitous  that, 
as  Christ  did  not  disdain  to  stoop  to  the  feeling  of  our  in- 
firmities, we  should  be  eager,  not  indeed  to  eradicate 
our  affections,  "  seeking  after  that  inhuman  airdOeia  com- 
mended by  the  Stoics,"  but  "  to  correct  and  subdue  that  obstin- 
acy which  pervades  them,  on  account  of  the  sin  of  Adam,"  and 
to  imitate  Christ  our  Leader, — who  is  himself  the  rule  of 
supreme  perfection — in  subduing  all  their  excesses.  For 
Christ,  he  adds  for  our  encouragement,  had  this  very  thing  in 
view,  when  he  took  our  affections  upon  himself — "  that 
through  his  power  we  might  subdue  everything  in  them  that 
is  sinful."  Thus,  Calvin,  with  his  wonted  eagerness  for  re- 
ligious impression,  points  to  the  emotional  life  of  Jesus,  not 
merely  as  a  proof  of  his  humanity,  but  as  an  incitement  to 
his  followers  to  a  holy  life  accordant  with  the  will  of  God. 
We  are  not  to  be  content  to  gaze  upon  him  or  to  admire  him : 
we  must  become  imitators  of  him,  until  we  are  metamorphosed 
into  the  same  image. 

Even  this  is,  of  course,  not  quite  the  highest  note.  The 
highest  note — Calvin  does  not  neglect  it. — is  struck  by  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  when  it  declares  that  "  it  behooved 
him  in  all  things  to  be  made  like  unto  his  brethren,  that  he 

^  Piscator  enlarges  upon  it  and  applies  it  thus :  "  Just  as  pure  and 
limpid  water  when  mixed  with  a  pure  dye  if  agitated,  foams  indeed  but 
is  not  made  turbid;  but  when  mixed  with  an  impure  and  dirty  dye,  if 
agitated,  not  only  forms  foam  but  is  made  turbid  and  dirty ;  so  the  heart  of 
Christ  pure  from  all  imperfection,  was  indeed  agitated  by  the  affections 
implanted  in  human  nature,  but  was  soiled  by  no  sin;  but  our  hearts  are 
so  agitated  by  affections  that  they  are  soiled  by  the  sin  which  inheres  in 


ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD  89 

might  be  a  merciful  and  faithful  High-priest  in  things  pertain- 
ing to  God,  to  make  propitiation  for  the  sins  of  the  people  " 
(Heb.  ii.  17).  "  Surely  ",  says  the  Prophet  (Is.  Hii.  4),  "  he 
hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows  " — a  general 
statement  to  which  an  Evangelist  (Mt.  viii.  i)  has  given  a 
special  application  (as  a  case  in  point)  when  he  adduces  it  in 
the  form,  "  himself  took  our  infirmities  and  bore  our  diseases." 
He  subjected  himself  to  the  conditions  of  our  human  life  that 
he  might  save  us  from  the  evil  that  curses  human  life  in 
its  sinful  manifestation.  When  we  observe  him  exhibiting  the 
movements  of  his  human  emotions,  we  are  gazing  on  the  very 
process  of  our  salvation:  every  manifestation  of  the  truth  of 
our  Lord's  humanity  is  an  exhibition  of  the  reality  of  our 
redemption.  In  his  sorrows  he  was  bearing  our  sorrows,  and 
having  passed  through  a  human  life  like  ours,  he  remains 
forever  able  to  be  touched  with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmities. 
Such  a  High  Priest,  in  the  language  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  "  became  "  us.  We  needed  such  an  one.^^^  When 
we  note  the  marks  of  humanity  in  Jesus  Christ,  we  are  observ- 
ing his  fitness  to  serve  our  needs.  We  behold  him  made  a 
little  lower  than  the  angels  for  the  suffering  of  death,  and  our 
hearts  add  our  witness  that  it  became  him  for  whom  are  all 
things  and  through  whom  are  all  things,  in  bringing  many 
sons  unto  glory  to  make  the  author  of  their  salvation  perfect 
through  suffering. 

It  is  not  germane  to  the  present  inquiry  to  enter  into  the 
debate  as  to  whether,  in  assuming  flesh,  our  Lord  assumed  the 
flesh  of  fallen  or  of  unfallen  man.  The  right  answer,  beyond 
doubt,  is  that  he  assumed  the  flesh  of  unfallen  man :  it  is  not 
for  nothing  that  Paul  tells  us  that  he  came,  not  in  sinful  flesh, 
but  in  ''the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh"  (Ro.  viii.  3).  But  this 
does  not  mean  that  the  flesh  he  assumed  was  not  under  a  curse : 
it  means  that  the  curse  under  which  his  flesh  rested  was  not  the 
curse  of  Adam's  first  sin  but  the  curse  of  the  sins  of  his  people : 
"  him  who  knew  no  sin,  he  made  sin  in  our  behalf  " ;  he  who 

^^  Westcott  in  he. :  "  Even  our  human  sense  of  fitness  is  able  to  recog- 
nize the  complete  correspondence  between  the  characteristics  of  Christ  as 
High  Priest  and  the  believers'  wants."  Davidson,  in  loc. :  "  He  suited 
our  necessities  and  condition." 


I 


90  ON   THE  EMOTIONAL  LIFE  OF  OUR  LORD 

was  not,  even  as  man,  under  a  curse,  "  became  a  curse  for  us  ". 
He  was  accursed,  not  because  he  became  man,  but  because  he 
bore  the  sins  of  his  people;  he  suffered  and  died  not  because 
of  the  flesh  he  took  but  because  of  the  sins  he  took.  He  was, 
no  doubt,  born  of  a  woman,  born  under  the  law  (Gal.  iv.  4),  in 
one  concrete  act ;  he  issued  from  the  Virgin's  womb  already  our 
sin-bearer.  But  he  was  not  sin-bearer  because  made  of  a 
woman;  he  was  made  of  a  woman  that  he  might  become  sin- 
bearer;  it  wasv  because  of  the  suffering  of  death  that  he 
was  made  a  little  lower  than  the  angels  (Heb.  ii.  9).  It  is 
germane  to  our  inquiry,  therefore,  to  take  note  of  the  fact  that 
among  the  emotions  which  are  attested  as  having  found  place 
in  our  Lord's  life-experiences,  there  are  those  which  belong  to 
him  not  as  man  but  as  sin-bearer,  which  never  would  have 
invaded  his  soul  in  the  purity  of  his  humanity  save  as  he  stood 
under  the  curse  incurred  for  his  people's  sins.  The  whole  series 
of  his  emotions  are,  no  doubt,  affected  by  his  position  under  the 
curse.  Even  his  compassion  receives  from  this  a  special  qual- 
ity :  is  this  not  included  in  the  great  declaration  of  Heb.  iv.  15  ? 
Can  we  doubt  that  his  anger  against  the  powers  of  evil  which 
afflict  man,  borrowed  particular  force  from  his  own  experience 
of  their  baneful  working?  And  the  sorrows  and  dreads  which 
constricted  his  heart  in  the  prospect  of  death,  culminating  in 
the  extreme  anguish  of  the  dereliction, — do  not  these  consti- 
tute the  very  substance  of  his  atoning  sufferings  ?  As  we  sur- 
vey the  emotional  life  of  our  Lord  as  depicted  by  the  Evangel- 
ists, therefore,  let  us  not  permit  it  to  slip  out  of  sight,  that 
we  are  not  only  observing  the  proofs  of  the  truth  of  his  human- 
ity, and  not  merely  regarding  the  most  perfect  example  of  a 
human  life  which  is  afforded  by  history,  but  are  contemplating 
the  atoning  work  of  the  Saviour  in  its  fundamental  elements. 
The  cup  which  he  drank  to  its  bitter  dregs  was  not  his  cup  but 
our  cup;  and  he  needed  to  drink  it  only  because  he  was  set 
upon  our  salvation. 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

An  Address  on  Isaiah  ix.   5  and  6   (English  Version 

6  AND  7) 


John  D.  Davis 


The  Messianic  element  in  the  Book  of  the  Prophet  Isaiah,  Chapters  vii-xii. 
The  child  of  chapter  ix.  Three  constructions  given  to  the  words 
of  the  name.  The  expectation  awakened  by  the  title  Wonderful. 
The  title  that  is  translated  Mighty  God.  The  title  that  is  ren- 
dered Everlasting  Father.  The  upholding  of  the  kingdom.  The 
attributes  of  the  Messiah  in  the  light  of  similar  phenomena  in 
Scripture,  particularly  identification  with,  yet  distinctness  from^ 
Jehovah. 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL^ 

Unto  us  a  child  is  born,  unto  us  a  son  is  given;  and  the  government 
shall  be  upon  his  shoulder:  and  his  name  shall  be  called  Wonderful, 
Counsellor,  Mighty  God,  Everlasting  Father,  Prince  of  Peace.  Of  the 
increase  of  his  government  and  of  peace  there  shall  be  no  end,  upon  the 
throne  of  David,  and  upon  his  kingdom,  to  establish  it,  and  to  uphold  it 
with  justice  and  with  righteousness  from  henceforth  even  for  ever.  The 
zeal  of  Jehovah  of  hosts  will  perform  this  (Isaiah  ix.  5,  6:  English 
version  6,  7;  American  revision.) 

These  words  of  the  prophet  are  apt  to  send  the  music  of 
Handel's  Messiah  surging  through  the  mind.  We  hear  again 
the  burst  and  volume  of  sound  and  the  crash  of  instruments 
as  these  names  are  repeated  one  after  the  other  and  emphasized 
by  the  beat  of  the  loud  kettledrum.  One  cannot  do  better, 
when  meditating  on  these  verses,  than  allow  the  strains  of  the 
oratorio  to  form  an  accompaniment  to  the  thought  and  exalt 
the  spirit ;  for  Handel  made  no  mistake  in  giving  this  prophetic 
utterance  a  place  in  an  oratorio  of  the  Messiah.  The  verses  are 
found  in  that  section  of  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah,  extending 
from  chapter  vii.  to  chapter  xii.,  which  has  received  the  title 
The  Book  of  Immanuel  or  The  Consolation  of  Immanuel^ 

^An  address. 

"Immanuel  (Is.  vii.  14),  however,  is  not  understood  by  all  students  of 
prophecy  to  be  the  Messianic  king.    The  main  counter-theories  are  two: 

1.  Immanuel  is  not  an  individual;  but  is  the  representative  of  a  new 
generation,  the  regenerate  Judah.  So  von  Hofmann,  Budde  {New  World, 
1895,  p.  739),  Kuenen  {Einleitung ,  II.  S.  41).  Dillmann  guardedly  says 
that  Immanuel,  "if  not  the  future  Messiah  himself,  is  at  least  the  begin- 
ning and  representative  of  the  new  generation,  out  of  which  finally  one 
occupies  the  throne  (Commentar,  5te  Aufl.,  S.  74).  Smend,  too,  once 
held  this  view  (Lehrbuch  der  alttestamentlichen  Religionsgeschichte ,  S 
215),  but  he  has  retracted  it  in  favor  of  Immanuel's  identity  with  the 
Messiah  (2te  Aufl.,  S.  229). 

2.  Any  boy,  born  within  a  year,  may  be  properly  called  Immanuel  by 
his  mother  as  a  memorial  that  God's  active  presence  has  been  manifested 


94  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

(Delitzsch).  In  these  six  chapters  prophecies  regarding  the 
promised  deliverer  of  Israel  follow  each  other  in  rapid  suc- 
cession. The  whole  section  is  aglow  with  the  Messianic  glory. 
Judgment,  indeed,  is  predicted ;  but  it  is  transfigured  and  glori- 
fied by  the  hope  centered  in  the  remnant  of  Judah  and  in  the 
ideal  son  of  David  (Giesebrecht,  Beitrdge  zur  Jesaiakritik,  S. 
87) .  And  this  particular  passage  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  Isaiah 
has  its  own  distinguishing  Messianic  marks.  There  are  those, 
it  is  true,  who^  question  its  authorship  an^  the  date  when  it  was 
uttered;  but  questions  of  date  and  authorship  do  not  obscure 

in  Judah;  and  the  lad's  increasing  years  will  serve  conveniently  to  meas- 
ure the  time  of  predicted  events.  Such  substantially  is  the  interpretation 
given  by  Roorda  (Orientalia,  1840  I.  130-135),  W.  Robertson  Smith  (The 
Prophets  of  Israel,  new  ed.,  p.  272),  Giesebrecht  (Studien  und  Kritiken^ 
1888,  S.  218  and  Anm.  i),  Hackmann  (Zukunftserwartung  des  Jesaia,  S. 
63,  161),  Volz  (Vorexilische  Jahweprophetie  und  der  Messias,  S.  41), 
Marti  (Kurzer  Hand-commentar:  Jesaja,  S.  76),  and  Schultz  (Alttesta- 
mentliche  Theologie,  5te  Aufl.,  S.  615,  616),  who,  however,  prefers  to  re- 
gard Immanuel  as  the  prophet's  son,  and  the  bestowal  of  the  name  as  a 
pledge  that  God  will  not  forsake  his  people.  Compare  Kirkpatrick  (The 
Doctrine  of  the  Prophets,  p.  189-191),  who  explains  that  a  mother  "may 
with  confidence  give  him  a  name  significant  of  the  Presence  of  God  with 
His  people.  That  Presence  will  be  manifested  in  deliverance  and  in 
judgement.  .  .  .  He  is  the  pledge  for  his  generation  of  the  truth  ex- 
pressed in  his  name."  Duhm's  curious  modification  may  be  included  in 
this  class.  He  believes  that  superstitious  meaning  was  attributed  to  the 
first  words  spoken  by  a  woman  after  the  birth  of  her  child.  The 
utterance  was  regarded  as  an  oracle,  and  was  used  as  a  name  for  the 
new-born  child.  In  the  moment  that  the  Syrians  are  obliged  to  withdraw 
God  will  prompt  some  woman,  who  has  just  borne  a  son,  to  call  out 
Immanuel,  God  with  us  (Handkommentar  sum  Alten  Testament:  Jesaia, 
S.  S3  f). 

In  the  judgment  of  Duhm,  Hackmann,  Volz,  Marti,  the  genuineness  of 
vii.  15  and  17  must  be  denied  and  the  verses  exscinded.  It  is  significant 
that  according  to  Duhm  (S.  54),  Volz  (S.  41),  Marti  (S.  yy,  85),  Nowack 
(Die  kleinen  Propheten,  on  Mic.  v.  2  [3]),  and  Wellhausen  (Die  kleinen 
Propheten,  Mic.  v.  2),  the  existence  of  passages  like  Is.  vii.  15  and 
Mic.  V.  2  [3],  and  Immanuel  in  Is.  viii.  8,  10,  prove  that  even  in  Old 
Testament  times  Immanuel  in  Is.  vii.  14  was  understood  to  be  the  Messiah. 

Umbreit  "cannot  with  entire  confidence  explain  vii.  14  as  Messianic;" 
and  Nowack  is  unable  to  convince  himself  of  the  correctness  of  the 
Messianic  interpretation  of  it  (Theologische  Abhandlungen  .  .  .  fUr 
Heinrich  Julius  Holtzmann  dargebracht,  S.  58). 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL  95 

the  identity  of  the  person  upon  whom  the  prophet's  gaze  is  fixed. 
The  child  is  the  Messiah.  Noted  Jewish  commentators,  in- 
deed, have  explained  him  to  be  Hezekiah.  This  explanation 
was  given  by  Solomon  Jarchi,  Abenezra,  and  David  Kimchi 
during  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Luzzatto  in  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  yet  more  recently  in  Jewish  circles  by 
the  Orientalist  James  Darmesteter  {Les  Prophetes  d'Israel, 
1892,  p.  60),  the  historian  David  Cassel  (Geschichte  der 
judischen  Liter atur,  1873,  iste  Abth.,  2ter  Abschnitt  S.  182, 
Anm.  4),  and  by  Professor  Barth  (Beitrdge  zur  Erkldrung  des 
Jesaias,  1885,  S.  15  ff.)  ;  and  it  lives  among  the  rabbis  (J.  H. 
Schwarz,  Geschichtliche  Entstehung  der  messianischen  Idee  des 
Judenthums,  S.  39;  Hirsch,  Das  Buck  Jesaia).  The  same 
interpretation  was  offered  by  Grotius,  Hensler,  Paulus,  Ge- 
senius,  Hendewerk;  but  was  rejected  by  their  contemporaries 
Cocceius,  Vitringa,  Eichhorn,  Rosenmiiller ;  and  its  general 
rejection  by  the  more  recent  exegetes  has  made  clear  that  it 
cannot  be  held  (Hackmann,  S.  130).  The  main  reasons 
for  dismissing  it  are  sufficiently  stated  in  the  words  of  Dill- 
mann:  i.  "All  the  tenses  from  viii.  23^  onward  relate 
either  to  the  past  or  to  the  future;  the  impossibility  of 
referring  viii.  23^  ix.  3,  4  to  actual  events  of  history 
is  clear."  There  is  a  look  forward  into  the  future.  (Cf. 
also  Alexander.)  2.  The  titles  given  to  the  child  "  can  be  un- 
derstood of  Hezekiah  only  in  greatly  weakened  manner  "  (so 
already  Vitringa;  and  cp.  Rosenmiiller).  3.  "From  viii.  9, 
10,  16-18  it  follows  with  certainty  that  Isaiah  is  treating  of 
hopes  belonging  to  the  ideal  future.  And  if  the  Messianic 
hope  is  certain  in  chapter  xi.,  what  interest  has  one  to  remove 
it  from  this  passage  [in  the  ninth  chapter]  by  unnatural  in- 
terpretations^? "  Modern  exegesis  and  criticism  have  given 
their  verdict:  Without  doubt  the  child  is  the  great  king  of 
the  future,  of  the  house  and  lineage  of  David. ^ 

The  composer  of  the  oratorio  was  right,  too,  in  calling  to 

"The  child  of  chap.  9  ...  is  admitted,  on  all  hands,  to  be  the 
Messiah  of  the  house  of  David "  (A.  B.  Davidson,  Old  Testament 
Prophecy,  p.  357)  ;  e.  g.,  within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  by  Briggs, 
Cheyne,  Driver,  G.  A.  Smith,  Kirkpatrick,  Skinner,  Davidson,  Dillmann, 


96  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

his  aid  all  the  resources  of  the  orchestra  for  a  burst  of  triumph- 
ant music  at  the  mention  of  each  name  in  the  manifold  title 
of  the  Messiah.  For  the  prophet  is  bringing  to  the  people  of 
God  tidings  of  greatest  joy.  He  tells  them,  as  they  sit  in 
darkness  and  despair,  that  the  night  is  passing  and  the  dawn 
is  drawing  nigh.  Sorrow  is  vanquished  forever,  conflict  ended, 
peace  at  last.  The  prophet  proclaims  to  the  oppressed  people 
of  God  the  advent  of  their  deliverer,  enumerates  one  by  one 
his  superb  qualities,  discloses  his  sufficiency  for  the  task  im- 
posed upon  him,  and  describes  the  peace  without  end  under 
his  beneficent  reign. 

Three  principal  interpretations  have  been  proposed  for  the 
name.  i.  The  child's  name  is  merely  Prince  of  Peace  (Solo- 
mon Jarchi,  David  Kimchi,  and  recently  Rabbi  Hirsch).  The 
other  exalted  epithets  are  titles  of  God.  The  translation  should 
be :  The  Wonderful,  the  Counsellor,  the  mighty  God  calls  his 
name  Prince  of  Peace.  There  is,  however,  a  fatal  objection 
to  this  translation;  namely,  the  order  of  the  words.  In  He- 
brew the  word  '  name '  cannot  be  separated  by  the  subject  of 
the  sentence  from  the  name  itself.  There  is  no  exception  to 
this  rule.  Cocceius  demonstrated  the  fact  (Consideratio  respon- 
sionis  Judaicae,  cap.  vi.  14)  ;*  and  since  his  day,  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  this  interpretation  of  the  name  has 
had  no  standing  before  a  court  of  scholars. 

2.  It  has  been  proposed  to  take  all  the  titles,  given  to  the 
child,  together  and  read  them  as  a  sentence.  Names  that  con- 
sist of  a  sentence  are  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  in  the 
Hebrew  literature  that  is  preserved  in  the  Old  Testament.  To 
be  sure  there  are  names  like  Terah,  '  wild  goat ',  Deborah,  '  a 
bee  \  Barak,  '  lightning  *,  Hannah,  '  grace  ',  Saul,  '  asked  ', 
Amos,  '  a  burden  ',  Jonah,  '  a  dove  ',  Nahum,  '  compassionate  *. 
But  the  majority  of  proper  names  are  sentences,  as  Ishmael, 

Kuenen,  Guthe  (Zukunftsbild  des  Jesaid),  Giesebrecht,  Duhm,  Cornill 
{Der  israelitische  Prophetismus",  S.  60),  Hackmann,  Volz,  Marti,  Smend, 
Nowack). 

*  Calvin  had  already  stated  that  the  order  of  words  makes  it  impossible 
to  construe  all  the  titles,  from  Wonderful  to  Prince  of  Peace  inclusive,  as 
the  subject  of  the  verb  call  and  thus  obtain  the  meaning  that  God  names 
the  child. 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL  97 

Israel,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Daniel;  and  not  a  few  are 
comparatively  long  sentences,  and  sometimes  contain  a  direct 
object.  Such  are  the  names  of  Isaiah's  two  sons,  Shear- ja- 
shub,  '  a  remnant  shall  return ',  and  Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 
that  is,  '  spoil  speedeth,  prey  hasteth ' ;  also  Micaiah,  *  who  is 
like  Jehovah?  ',  and  Elihoenai,  '  my  eyes  are  toward  Jehovah ', 
and  Romamti-ezer,  *  I  have  exalted  him  who  is  a  help  \  and 
Tob-adonijah,  *  good  is  my  Lord  Jehovah  '.  Even  Immanuel 
is  a  sentence :  '  God  is  with  us  '.  Following  such  analogies  it 
has  been  proposed  to  read  all  the  words  in  the  name  given  to 
the  child  as  a  sentence.  A  verb  is  needed.  Now  the  word 
rendered  '  counsellor '  is  in  fact  a  participle,  '  the  counseling 
one  '.  Instead  of  treating  it  as  a  noun  denoting  the  agent,  it 
is  taken  as  the  verb  of  the  sentence.  Then  the  first  word, 
'  wonderful ',  is  construed  as  the  direct  object,  and  is  under- 
stood to  have  been  placed  at  the  beginning  of  the  sentence  for 
the  sake  of  emphasis.  All  the  words  that  follow  *  counsellor  ' 
are  regarded  as  titles  of  God  and  are  construed  as  the  subject. 
The  sentence  then  reads:  The  mighty  God,  the  everlasting 
Father,  the  Prince  of  Peace  is  counseling  a  wonderful  thing. 
The  prophet  announces  the  birth  of  a  child  whose  name  being 
interpreted  shall  be,  A  wonderful  thing  does  God  the  strong, 
the  eternal  father,  the  prince  of  peace,  resolve.  Luzzatto 
advanced  this  interpretation.  It  has  caused  merriment  among 
solemn  commentators.  Dillmann  calls  it  an  unparalleled  mon- 
strosity, and  Delitzsch  speaks  of  it  as  a  sesquipedalian  name. 
The  jest  is  dropped  and  objections  are  formally  stated.  "  If 
the  intention  is  to  emphasize  the  Divine  wisdom,  why  accum- 
ulate epithets  of  God  which  do  not  contribute  to  that  object?  " 
(Cheyne).  "Why  employ  the  participle  instead  of  the  usual 
verbal  form,  viz:,  the  imperfect  or  perfect?  "  (Cheyne,  Duhm). 
Finally  the  title  of  '  Prince  of  Peace '  belongs  to  the  child  and 
not  to  God  according  to  the  unmistakable  context. 

3.  The  several  words  or  word-groups  are  so  many  titles 
descriptive  of  the  child.  He  is  wonderful,  he  is  a  counselor, 
he  is  the  mighty  God,  he  is  the  everlasting  father,  he  is  the 
prince  of  peace.  There  are  a  number  of  familiar  analogues 
to  this  composite  name.     Thus  in  the  New  Testament  our 


98  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

blessed  Master  is  frequently  entitled  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He 
is  our  Lord;  he  is  Jesus,  for  he  saves  his  people  from  their 
sins;  he  is  the  Christ,  the  long  expected  Messiah  (see  also 
Is.  Iviii.  12,  Ixii.  12;  Amos  iv.  13;  Rev.  xvii.  5,  xix.  16). 
In  the  name  of  the  child  the  number  of  titles  is  counted 
variously :  six,  as  in  the  Vulgate  and  in  Luther's  Bible ;  five,  as 
in  the  English  version;  or  four,  as  on  the  margin  of  the  re- 
vised version,  each  title  being  a  pair  of  words.  The  very  first 
of  these  titles,  on  any  enumeration,  introduces  the  child  to  us 
as  an  extraordinary  person.  A  noun,  great  enough  in  meaning 
to  denote  the  wonders  wrought  by  the  God  of  Israel  (Ex. 
XV.  11;  Ps.  Ixxvii.  14,  Ixxviii.  12;  Is.  xxv.  i;  cf.  Judg. 
xiii.  18),  describes  the  character  of  the  child.  Undue  impor- 
tance is  not  attached  to  this  fact;  still  the  word  does  betoken 
the  peculiar  greatness  of  the  child,  and  prepares  the  mind  for 
the  exalted  predicates  that  follow;  and  when  combined  with 
its  next  neighbor  so  as  to  yield  the  meaning  "A  very  wonder  of 
a  counselor,"  the  title  associates  the  child  in  a  measure  with 
"Jehovah,  who  is  wonderful  in  counsel"    (Is.   xxviii.   29). 

Of  these  titles  two,  in  the  familiar  translation  Mighty  God, 
Everlasting  Father,  at  once  attract  attention.  Marvelous  at- 
tributes for  a  son  of  David!     What  explanation  is  possible? 

Regarding  the  title  which  is  rendered  Mighty  God,  one  may 
be  tempted  to  see  a  formal  similarity  between  'el  gihhor,  mighty 
God,  and  'etey  gibborim  in  Ezek.  xxxii.  21,  and  in  this 
latter  verse  seek  the  meaning  of  the  title.  The  words  of  Ezek- 
iel  are  rendered  in  the  English  version  by  "  the  strong  among 
the  mighty  "  (so  also  by  Delitzsch,  Messianische  Weissagung- 
en,  S.  loi ).  They  may  be  translated  literally,  "  the  strong  of 
the  mighty,  where  *  strong '  is  not  a  class  among  the  mighty, 
but  identical  with  them. — the  strong  mighty  ones,  genitive  of 
apposition  (A.  B.  Davidson  in  Cambridge  Bible;  E^ekiel). 
Thus  regarded,  the  phrase  on  its  face  might  appear  to  be  merely 
the  plural  of  the  Messianic  title  V/  gibbor  (G.  A.  Smith,  Expos- 
itor's Bible:  The  Book  of  Isaiah,  p.  137).  The  title  accord- 
ingly would  mean,  not  *  a  very  god  of  a  hero  ',  but  *  the  strong 
mighty  one  '.  This  construction  is  outwardly  the  same  as  that 
of  the  three  other  Messianic  titles  (when  the  number  is  thought 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL  99 

of  as  four),  since  in  each  case  a  noun  stands  in  the  construct 
relation  before  another  noun;  but  it  yields  a  meaning  that  is 
not  symmetrical  with  their  meaning.  The  epithet  strong  mighty 
one  is  a  form  of  words  unlike  that  seen  in  '  wonder  of  a  coun- 
selor ',  '  father  of  eternity  ',  and  *  prince  of  peace  '.  A  dif- 
ferent  interpretation   is   offered   by   Gesenius.      He   includes 

*  hero  '  among  the  meanings  which  he  assigns  to  the  word  'el 
(also  Brown,  Hebrew  and  English  Lexicon),  and  renders  the 
title  in  Is.  ix.  5  by  *  mighty  hero'  {Thesaurus).  On  this  in- 
terpretation symmetry  of  construction  does  not  exist  among  the 
titles.  Dillmann  denies  that  'el  is  attested  as  meaning  '  hero ' 
by  Ezek.  xxxii.  21,  xxxi.  11,  since  in  those  passages  'ayil, '  ram ', 

*  leader  ',  may  be  at  the  basis  of  the  forms  (Commentai^  S.  94; 
Alttestamentliche  Theologie,  S.  210;  Commentar  zu  Exodus 
XV.  15;  so  also  Buhl's  edition  of  Gesenius'  Handwbrterhuch, 
and  Siegfried-Stade,  Hebrdisches  Worterhuch) ;  and  he  re- 
tains the  meaning  God  in  the  Messianic  title.  But  Dillmann 
does  not  adopt  the  rendering  "  a  mighty  God  ".  Following 
Roorda  {Orientalia,  i.  173)  he  prefers  the  translation  "  a  god 
of  a  hero  ",  because  the  three  other  names  are  formed  by 
means  of  the  construct  state.  There  is  attractiveness  in  this 
argument  from  symmetry.  Then,  too,  each  of  the  four  titles 
consists  of  three  syllables  in  Hebrew  (if  the  word  for  *  won- 
der',  being  a  segholate,  is  pronounced  as  one  syllable).  And 
the  theory  receives  some  confirmation  fromi  the  symmetrical 
form  of  the  name  given  to  Isaiah's  son  Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 
'  Spoil  speedeth,  prey  hasteth  '.  In  the  name  of  the  prophet's 
son  the  symmetry  is  both  external  and  internal,  both  in  form 
and  meaning.  But  in  the  name  of  the  Messianic  king,  if  the 
second  title  is  rendered  *  a  god  of  a  hero  ',  the  symmetry  of  the 
four  titles  is  external  only.  It  extends  to  the  use  of  the  con- 
struct relation,  and  perhaps  to  the  trisyllabic  form,  but  ends 
there ;  for  even  on  the  translation  '  wonder  of  a  counselor ', 

*  god  of  a  hero ',  '  father  of  booty  ',  or  '  father  of  perpetuity  ', 

*  prince  of  peace  ',  while  the  first  and  second  titles  would  be 
similar  in  construction  and  force,  they  would  not  be  similar 
in  force  with  either  the  third  or  the  fourth.  Assuming,  how- 
ever, the  correctness  of  the  attractive  theory  that  symmetry  of 


100  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

construction  does  belong  to  each  of  the  four  titles  so  that  in 
each  case  the  first  word  of  the  pair  is  in  the  construct  state  be- 
fore the  second  word,  the  second  title  may  still  be  properly 
rendered  *  mighty  God  ' ;  for  a  noun  not  infrequently  stands  in 
the  construct  state  before  its  adjective  or,  as  the  matter  is 
sometimes  stated,  before  an  adjective  treated  as  an  abstract 
noun  (Is.  xvii.  lO,  xxii.  24,  xxviii.  4,  xxxvi.  2;  Ps.  Ixxiii.  10, 
Ixxiv.  15;  Prov.  vi.  24).  On  this  construction  '  mighty  God  ' 
is  the  correct  rendering  of  the  title. 

Two  arguments  in  particular  have  had  weight  with  exegetes 
against  any  other  rendering  than  *  mighty  God  '. 

I.  The  Hebrew  word  'el  is  always  used  by  the  prophet 
Isaiah  in  the  high  sense  of  God  (Delitzsch),  always  "in  an  ab- 
solute sense  ....  never  hyperbolically  or  metaphorically  " 
(Cheyne).  2.  In  the  very  next  chapter  exactly  the  same 
phrase  means  'the  mighty  God'  (x.  21).^  The  phrase  was 
traditional  among  the  Hebrews  as  a  title  of  God  (Deut.  x.  17; 
Jer.  xxxii.  18;  Neh.  ix.  32).  The  consideration  of  such  facts  as 
these  drove  Luzzatto  to  the  expedient  of  combining  the  titles 
into  a  sentence,  in  order  that  he  might  retain  the  sense  of 
*  mighty  God  '  without  admitting  it  to  be  descriptive  of  the 
Davidic  king.  And  Gressmann,  whose  premises  allow  him 
a  free  hand  in  exegesis,  remarks :  "  Whatever  the  explanation 
be,  the  fact  itself  stands  fast :  a  divine  attribute  is  here  assigned 
to  the  Messiah"  (S.  282). 

"The  attribution  of  x.  21  to  a  different  author  than  the  writer  of  ix.  5 
does  not  destroy  the  force  of  these  facts,  for  the  usage  of  the  phrase 
as  an  exalted  title  of  God  is  still  attested  by  x.  21.  Nor  is  escape  to  be 
had  by  referring  the  title  in  both  passages  to  the  messianic  king  (Marti; 
Mitchell,  Isaiah,  p.  212)  ;  for  even  assuming  that  it  does  denote  the  king 
in  the  two  passages,  it  must  still  be  translated  mighty  God  or  given  an 
equivalent  rendering  (Delitzsch;  von  OrelH),  in  accordance  with  the 
uniform  usage  of  the  word  'el,  God,  in  the  book  of  Isaiah  and  with  the 
traditional  meaning  of  the  title.  The  reference  of  x.  21,  moreover,  is  to 
Jehovah  rather  than  to  his  Anointed  (Gesenius;  Ewald;  Riehm,  116; 
Dillmann;  Schultz,  611;  Cheyne;  Driver,  71;  Kirkpatrick^  193;  Smend^ 
232;  Skinner;  Volz,  41;  Gressmann,  281),  for  "it  is  Jehovah  who  acts 
alone  throughout  this  part  of  the  prophecy"  (Cheyne,  Prophecies  of 
Isaiah^,  73),  in  the  paragraphs  comprised  in  verses  16-34  (Ewald,  Pro- 
pheten',  ii.  461). 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WOkb'ERf^lJL'      '     loi 

What  does  this  great  title  '  mighty  God  '  signify  when  be- 
stowed upon  the  Messianic  king?  i.  Ilgen  lightly  dismisses  it 
as  the  flattery  of  a  court  poet  (Paulus'  Memorabilia,  vii.  152). 
But  in  times  of  dire  distress  (Is.  viii.  22,  23),  flattery  is 
seldom  heard.  The  hope  of  deliverance  held  out  to  the  op- 
pressed people  of  God  by  the  prophet  would  be  a  mockery  of 
their  plight  were  it  based  on  empty  or  extravagant  term's  in 
which  he  spoke  to  them  of  the  promised  deliverer.  The  re- 
mark may  be  made  at  this  point  that  the  titles  given  by  the 
prophet  to  the  Messianic  king  are  often  compared  by  commen- 
tators with  the  epithets  found  in  addresses  to  the  ancient  rulers 
who  held  sway  in  the  valleys  of  the  Nile  and  the  Tigris.  The 
comparison  is  sometimes  made  in  order  to  discount  the  value  of 
the  titles  given  to  the  Messiah.  But  the  epithets  bestowed  by 
the  Babylonians,  Assyrians,  and  Egyptians  upon  their  kings 
were  not  always  words  of  flattery.  They  often  deserve  respect, 
notably  in  ancient  Egypt;  for  very  frequently  they  express 
deep  conviction  and  reveal  genuine  faith. 

2.  The  title  '  mighty  God  '  is  explained  as  given  to  the 
Messianic  king  by  popular  hyperbole  (Hitzig,  Duhm).  But 
even  in  extravagance  of  speech  the  Hebrews  did  not  employ  a 
form  of  words  that  might  suggest  even  superficially  identifica- 
tion with  God.  They  make  plain  that  comparison  only  is  in- 
tended, and  are  careful  to  introduce  a  term  that  expresses 
comparison  (Gen.  xxxiii.  10;  Ex.  iv.  16,  Zecli.  xii.  8;  also 
I  Sam.  xxix.  9;  2  Sam.  xiv.  17,  xix.  2y)  ;  and  they  use 
the  word  'Hohim,  not  'el  (Cheyne,  Prophecies  of  Isaiah,^ 
p.  62).  Quite  different  is  Ex.  vii.  i,  2.  There  Jehovah 
speaks,  and  not  man.  Jehovah  makes  Moses  a  god  to  Pha- 
raoh; puts  Moses  in  the  place  of  God  to  Pharaoh,  makes  him 
the  authoritative  representative  of  God  at  the  Egyptian  court, 
to  speak  the  words  that  God  himself  commands  and  do  the 
deeds  that  God  bids  and  empowers  him  to. do.  The  passage 
demands  and  illustrates  a  far  higher  interpretation  of  Messiah's 
title  than  the  explanation  which  sees  nothing  in  it  but  hyperbole. 

3.  The  Messiah  is  called  God,  not  in  a  metaphysical  sense, 
but  as  equipped  of  God  with  power  that  exceeds  the  human 
measure,  by  reason  of  the  Spirit  of  God  that  rests  upon  him; 


I02  THE  CAllLD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

Is.  xi.  2;  Mic.  v.  3  [4];  Zech.  xii.  8  (Dillmann,  Isaiah^  S. 
94;  Alttestamentliche  Theologie,  S.  530  f ;  Marti  on  ix.  5  and 
xi.  2).  The  Messianic  king  is  thus  a  glorified  Samson.  He 
is  a  purely  human  figure,  but  one  whom  the  Spirit  of  God  fills 
with  might.  He  will  not  be  a  fitful  deliverer  of  the  people 
like  Samson,  upon  whom  the  Spirit  of  God  came  occasionally ; 
but  he  will  be  a  king  permanently  armed  with  might  by  the 
abiding  presence  of  the  Spirit.  This  explanation  contains  a 
precious  truth  (xi:  2;  cp.  Mat.  xii.  28)"' but  it  does  not  set 
forth  all  the  facts. 

4.  Perhaps,  then,  the  prophet,  when  he  uses  the  title 
*  mighty  God  \  thinks  of  *'  the  Messiah,  somewhat  as  the 
Egyptians,  Assyrians,  and  Babylonians  regarded  their  king, 
as  an  earthly  representative  of  Divinity  "  (Cheyne,  Prophecies 
of  Isaiah,^  p.  61,  referring  to  Is.  xiv.  13).^  If  by  this  is 
meant  "  the  Oriental  belief  in  kings  as  incarnations  of  the 
Divine"  (Cheyne  on  Is.  xiv.  13;  Rosenmuller  on  Is.  ix.  5, 
deum  natura  humana  indutum),  a  term,  *  incarnation  ',  is  used 
to  which  a  vague  signification  must  be  given,  and  not  its 
technical  theological  sense.  The  ancient  Hebrews  believed,  in- 
deed, that  Jehovah  might  manifest  himself  in  human  form, 
and  had  occasionally  so  manifested  himself  on  earth  (Gen. 
xviii.  I,  33)  ;  but  that  is  quite  different  from  an  incarnation 
of  himself  in  a  son  of  man.  And  it  is  not  the  idea  in  Is.  ix.  5, 
where  a  descendant  of  David  is  called  mighty  God;  nor  is  it 
the  Egyptian  belief  regarding  the  king,  who  was  a  son  of  man, 
and  yet  somehow  a  manifestation  of  the  deity.  In  Egypt  the 
king  was  addressed  as  god,  regarded  as  the  presence  of  the 
god,  and  approached  with  prayer  and  offerings  (Wiedemann, 
Religion  der  alien  Aegypter,  S.  92 ;  Brugsch,  Aegyptologie,  S. 
203 ;  Maspero,  Dawn  of  Civilisation,  pp.  262-265 ) .   A  certain 

•  It  is  proper  to  remark  that  in  his  more  recent  work,  The  Book  of  the 
Prophet  Isaiah:  A  new  English  Translation,  1898,  p.  145,  Professor 
Cheyne,  speaking  of  the  title  'el  gibbor  in  ix.  5,  refers  to  x.  21,  "  which 
shows ",  he  says,  "  that  we  are  not  to  render  divine  hero  [but  Mighty 
Divinity  (p.  15)]  :  the  king  seems  to  Isaiah,  in  his  lofty  enthusiasm,  like 
one  of  those  angels  (as  we  moderns  call  them),  who  in  old  time  were 
said  to  mix  with  men,  and  even  contend  with  them,  and  who,  as  super- 
human beings,  were  called  by  the  name  of  'el  (Gen.  xxxii.  22-32). 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL  103 

vagueness  remains  about  this  Egyptian  belief,  even  after  the 
matter  has  been  stated.  Perhaps  the  conception  was  vague  in 
the  Egyptian  mind ;  but  at  least  these  three  features  appear  in 
their  attitude  toward  the  king.  Professor  Cheyne  suggests 
that  the  prophet  conceived  of  the  Messiah,  "  somewhat  as  the 
Egyptians  .  .  .  regarded  their  king,  as  an  earthly  rep- 
resentative of  divinity."  If  so,  it  was  evidently  a  profound 
conception  which  the  prophet  entertained  concerning  the  na- 
ture of  the  Messiah,  and  corresponded  more  closely  with  the 
revelation  of  himself  made  by  the  Christ  than  some  exegetes 
have  been  willing  to  believe. 

A  just  appreciation  of  the  greatness  of  the  idea  which  the 
Messianic  title  '  mighty  God'  conveyed  to  the  Israelites  may 
be  formed  by  a  consideration  of  the  following  facts.  The 
Hebrews  could  readily  think  of  a  human  being  as  a  representa- 
tive of  God,  and  speak  of  the  representative  as  God  {'^lohim). 
Judges,  as  the  representatives  of  God  and  invested  with  his  au- 
thority, are  called  gods  (Ps.  Ixxxii.  i,  6;  cp.  Ex.  xxii.  8,  9,  28). 
The  conception  becomes  larger  as  the  authority  and  power  of 
God's  representative  increase.  When  Jehovah  sent  Moses  as 
his  agent  and  representative  to  the  court  of  Pharaoh,  made 
him  superior  to  the  Egyptian  monarch,  appointed  him  to  lay 
commands  upon  Pharaoh,  and  empowered  him  to  enforce 
obedience,  he  made  Moses  a  god  to  Pharaoh  (Ex.  vii.  i).  All 
this  and  more  is  true  of  the  Messiah.  A  son  of  man,  heir  to  the 
throne  of  Judah,  he  is  declared  to  be  the  representative  of  Jeho- 
vah, in  the  place  of  God  on  the  throne;  he  is  clothed  with 
power  unceasingly  by  the  divine  Spirit,  and  rules  in  the  strength 
and  majesty  of  Jehovah  (Is.  xi.  2,  Mic.  v.  4) ;  and  he  is 
hailed  by  the  prophet,  or  at  least  named,  *  Mighty  God '. 
No  other  human  representative  of  God,  equipped  though  this 
representative  be  by  the  Spirit,  no  judge,  no  prophet,  no 
king,  not  even  Moses,  is  ever  called  *  Mighty  God '. 
That  title  is  given  to  Jehovah  alone  and  the  Messiah.  Let  no 
one  say  to  himself  that  "  the  Prince  is  only  called  by  "  this 
name.  "It  is  not  said  that  he  is,  but  that  he  shall  he  called  " 
the  mighty  God  (Geo.  A.  Smith,  The  Book  of  Isaiah,  p.  140). 
To  argue  thus  is  to  deceive  oneself.     The  meaning  of  the 


I04  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

prophet  is  clear.  It  is  written  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  Isaiah 
that,  when  the  judgment  has  passed  and  Zion  has  been  purified 
of  dross,  "  he  that  remaineth  in  Jerusalem  shall  be  called  holy  ". 
The  prophet  does  not  mean  that  in  the  new  Jerusalem  the  in- 
habitants shall  be  nominally  holy.  He  means  that  they  shall 
in  truth  be  holy.  Again  it  is  recorded  that  the  angel  said  unto 
Mary :  "  The  Holy  Ghost  shall  come  upon  thee,  and  the  power 
of  the  Highest  shall  overshadow  thee :  therefore  also  that  holy 
thing  which  shall  be  born  of  thee  shall  be  called  the  Son  of 
God."  He  shall  not  be  nominally  divine,  but  actually.  Even 
so  the  king  whose  advent  the  prophet  announces  is  called 

*  Prince  of  Peace '  and  *  Mighty  God ',  because  he  is  such. 

Leaving  this  title  for  the  present,  we  turn  to  that  one  which 
is  rendered  '  Everlasting  Father  '.  This  name  of  the  Messiah, 
"**  bi  'ad,  has  been  interpreted  as  meaning  '  possessor  of  etern- 
ity '  (Dathe,  Hengstenberg,  Guthe),  in  accordance  with  the 
well-known  Arabic  idiom.  The  employment  of  the  word 
'  father '  in  construction  with  a  noun  for  the  purpose  of  para- 
phrasing an  adjective  is  not  attested  with  certainty  in  Hebrew. 
Perhaps  it  is  so  used  in  proper  names,  like  Absalom;  but  in 
every  case  a  different  interpretation  is  possible.  The  title  has 
also  been  rendered  *  Booty-father ',  and  sometimes  explained 
as  meaning  a  distributor  of  booty.  The  word  'ad  in  the  sense 
of  booty  is  very  rare,  but  this  meaning  is  fully  attested  for  it 
by  Gen.  xlix.  2y.    A  stubborn  fact  lies  against  the  translation 

*  Booty-father  '.  "  The  meaning  is,  owner,  possessor,  or  dis- 
tributor of  booty  "  (Briggs,  Messianic  Prophecy,  p.  200).  The 
word  '  father '  is  thus  given  an  interpretation  that  '*  verges  on 
the  unprovable  sense  of  possessor"  (Marti).  And  in  partic- 
ular the  word  father  is  never  used  in  the  sense  of  distributor. 
Nor  does  the  title  mean  '  Producer  or  provider  of  booty  ' 
(Siegfried-Stade,  Worterhuch,  art.  'ad;  cp.  art.  'ab))  for  al- 
though 'ab  is  used  tropically  for  the  creator,  who  calls  a  thing 
into  existence,  and  can  be  employed  figuratively  to  denote  a 
kindly  provider,  the  assigned  meaning,  unless  most  carefully 
restricted,  makes  plunder  an  end  sought  in  the  conflict,  and  not 
the  mere  result  of  victory,  and  introduces  into  the  description 
the  spirit  of  selfish  gloating  over  the  rich  spoil,  whereas  the 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL  105 

salvation  of  the  people  and  the  reign  of  peace  are  the  absorbing 
hope.  Finally,  the  general  objection  to  every  interpretation 
which  employs  the  word  booty  in  the  title  is  that  the  thought 
yielded  thereby  is  incongruous  among  these  designations  of 
the  Messianic  king,  and  is  too  meager  in  content,  when  the 
preceding  title  is  rendered  mighty  God ;  and  for  this  rendering 
of  the  preceding  title  substantial  reasons  exist.  It  is  exegeti- 
cally  needful,  therefore,  to  give  to  the  word  'ad  in  the  Messi- 
anic title  its  customary  sense  of  endurance,  continuance,  and 
render  the  title  '  father  of  endurance '  and  understand  the 
designation  to  denote  a  continual  father,  one  who  enduringly 
acts  as  a  father  to  his  people  (Gesenius,  Delitzsch,  Dillmann, 
Riehm,  Cheyne,  Skinner,  Marti).  Is  any  limitation  to  be 
placed  on  the  word  continuance?  None  that  appears.  The 
Hebrew  word  may  denote  eternity,  and  not  a  few  representa- 
tive exegetes  understand  it  in  that  sense  in  this  Messianic 
title  (e.  g.  Hengstenberg,  Alexander,  Delitzsch,  Cheyne,  Gress- 
mann).  But  it  does  not  necessarily  signify  endless  time.  A 
prepositional  phrase  formed  with  it  is  rendered  forever,  and 
has  a  latitude  of  meaning  similar  to  that  of  the  English  word 
^  always  '  (Ps.  xix.  9  [10]  ;  xxii.  26  \_2y'\  ;  Ixxxix.  29  [30]  ; 
cxii.  3;  Prov.  xxix.  14;  Amos  i.  11,  "perpetually";  Mic. 
vii.  18;  cp.  "of  old".  Job.  xx.  4).  In  the  five  cases  where 
it  is  used  in  combination  with  a  noun,  as  in  the  Messianic 
title,  it  certainly  means  very  long  time,  unbounded  tim^e. 
Babylon  fondly  expected  to  be  "a  lady  forever  "  (Is.  xlvii. 
7,  see  Hitzig,  Cheyne,  Duhm,  Marti;  literally,  a  mistress  of 
duration).  No  limit  is  set  or  even  thought  of  by  the 
proud  city  of  the  Chaldeans,  no  time  when  she  shall  cease 
to  be.  The  'mountains  of  duration'  (Gen.  xlix.  26;  Hab. 
iii.  6)  are  well  spoken  of  as  everlasting  hills, '  eternal  moun- 
tains. 'Ages  of  duration'  (Is.  xlv.  17)  mean  world  with- 
out end,  all  eternity.  And  Is.  Ivii.  15  must  be  translated  "  the 
high  and  lofty  One  that  inhabiteth  eternity  ".  In  the  title  of 
the  Messianic  king  the  word  bears  in  it  a  like  fulness  of  mean- 
ing; for  nowhere  in  prophecy  is  it  intimated  that  the  Messiah 
shall  cease  to  reign.  No  limit  of  time  is  set  to  his  administra- 
tion.    In  fact,  this  particular  title  is  explicit.     It  contains  a 


\ 


I06  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

word  for  the  express  purpose  of  withholding  bounds  of  time 
from  the  Messiah's  activity.  He  shall  enduringly  act  as  a 
father  to  his  people. 

The  Messianic  king  comes  with  the  qualifications  signified 
by  the  titles  for  a  definite  beneficent  purpose,  which  the  pro- 
phet proceeds  to  state :  namely,  for  the  expansion  of  the  rule, 
and  for  welfare  without  end  over  David's  throne  and  kingdom, 
in  order  to  establish  the  kingdom  and  to  uphold  it  by  means  of 
justice  and  righteousness  which  he  exercises  from  henceforth 
even  forever.  As  one  maintains  his  bodily  strength  by  a  mor- 
sel of  bread  (Judg.  xix.  5),  as  God's  right  hand  supports  one, 
and  his  mercy  holds  one  up,  when  one's  foot  slippeth  (Ps.  xviii. 
35  [36],  xciv.  18),  as  a  king  upholdeth  his  throne  by  mercy 
(Prov.  XX.  28) ;  so  the  Messianic  king  upholds  the  throne  of 
David  forever  by  justice  which  he  administers  and  by  righteous- 
ness which  he  exercises  (s^  dakah,  not  sedek).  If  the  uphold- 
ing hand  is  withdrawn,  the  faint  and  feeble  fall;  if  the  bread 
is  withheld,  the  strength  fails;  if  justice  and  righteousness  are 
not  exercised,  the  throne  totters.  This  prophecy  is  a  distinct 
advance  over  the  promise  made  to  David  by  the  prophet  Na- 
than. The  promise  is  that  God  will  make  David  a  house  and 
establish  the  throne  of  David  and  of  David's  son  forever  (2 
Sam.  vii.  16,  19).  But  the  prophet  Isaiah  declares  that  the 
Messianic  king  himself  shall  uphold  the  kingdom  forever.  To 
deny  that  a  perpetual  reign  is  promised  the  child  (Marti),  and 
to  assert  that  the  reference  is  "  to  the  rule  of  David's  descend- 
ants "  (Duhm),  is  arbitrary  and  not  drawn  from  the  words 
of  the  prophet.  Professor  Cheyne,  commenting  on  the  words 
"  from  henceforth  even  forever ",  states  the  matter  thus : 
"  Two  meanings  are  exegetically  possible :  i .  That  the  Messiah 
shall  live  an  immortal  life  on  earth,  and,  2.  That  there  shall  be 
an  uninterrupted  succession  of  princes  of  his  house.  The  lat- 
ter is  favored  by  2  Sam.  vii.  12-16;  comp.  Ps.  xxi.  4,  Ixi.  6,  7; 
but  the  former  seems  to  me  more  in  accordance  with  the  general 
tenor  of  the  description."  Certainly  it  is;  for,  i.  The  prophecy 
marks  a  distinct  advance  over  the  promise  of  2  Sam.  vii.  16 
and  19.  2.  Unto  us  a  child  is  born.  It  is  a  solitary  figure  in 
whom  the  hope  of  the  nation  rests.    3.  To  the  prophet  the  final 


THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL  107 

Stage  of  history  has  been  reached,  and  he  beholds  the  prince 
upholding  the  kingdom.  4.  No  prophet  ever  contemplates  an 
end  of  Messiah's  reign  or  speaks  of  Messiah's  successors. 
"  Were  the  Messiah  to  cease  to  be,  how  could  the  Lord's  people 
maintain  their  ground  "  (Cheyne).  Whether  the  Messiah  lives 
an  immortal  life  on  earth  or  on  earth  and  in  heaven,  need  not 
be  discussed  (Mt.  xxviii.  20). 

The  results  of  this  study  so  far  are:  i.  The  title  '  Mighty 
God '  indicates  a  personage  of  peculiar  exaltation.  No  one 
save  this  king  and  Jehovah  is  called  '  Mighty  God '.  2.  The 
title  *  Father  of  duration  '  not  only  describes  him  as  the  father 
of  his  people,  but  assigns  to  his  fatherly  activity  duration  from 
which  bounds  of  time  are  expressly  withheld.  3.  The  predic- 
tion that  the  Messiah  shall  uphold  the  kingdom  of  David  for- 
ever demands  in  accordance  with  the  usage  of  the  word,  the 
tenor  of  the  passage,  and  the  drift  of  other  prophecies  of  the 
pre-exilic  period  the  perpetuity  of  his  reign.  These  three 
declarations  are  complementary  and  mutually  explanatory. 
He  is  mighty  God;  a  father  to  his  people  during  long,  un- 
bounded time;  and  upholds  the  kingdom  forever.  At  the 
same  time  the  Messianic  king  is  a  man,  a  descendant  of  David 
(xi.  i).  A  problem  is  here;  yet  it  cannot  be  solved  by  the  at- 
tempt to  tone  down  the  declarations  concerning  this  child  until 
they  sound  applicable  to  a  human  being.  For  not  only  have  the 
titles  shown  inherent  power  to  maintain  themselves  in  full 
strength  and  value  in  biblical  interpretation ;  but  nothing  would 
be  gained  by  the  nxethod,  if  successful,  for  the  fundamental 
question  does  not  concern  the  Messianic  king  alone.  The 
underlying  conception  of  identity  with  Jehovah  and  possession 
of  his  attributes,  yet  distinctness  from  him,  comes  to  the  front 
elsewhere  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  It  is  met  in  connection 
with  the  angel  of  the  Lord  and  also  with  the  suffering  servant 
of  the  Lord,  on  any  interpretation  of  the  fifty-third  chapter  of 
Isaiah  which  does  not  neglect  the  doctrine  taught  in  Israel  in 
the  prophet's  day  concerning  sin  and  atonement  (Davis,  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Bible, ^  art.  Servant  of  the  Lord).  The  illustra- 
tion afforded  by  the  angel  of  the  Lord  must  suffice  for  the 
present  discussion,  although  the  important  particular  of  human 


I08  THE  CHILD  WHOSE  NAME  IS  WONDERFUL 

descent  is  not  involved  in  it  as  in  the  case  of  the  Messiah. 
Mention  is  made  of  an  angel,  and  under  the  circumstances 
it  is  proper  always  to  think  of  the  same  angel,  v^ho  is  distin- 
guished from  Jehovah,  and  yet  is  identified  with  him  (Gen. 
xvi.  lo,  13,  xviii.  2,  33,  xxii.  11-16,  xxxi.  11,  13;  Ex.  iii.  2,  4; 
Josh.  v.  13-15,  vi.  2;  Zech.  i.  10-13,  iii.  i,  2),  who  revealed  the 
face  of  God  (Gen.  xxxii.  30),  in  whom  was  Jehovah's  name 
(Ex.  xxiii.  21),  and  whose  presence  was  equivalent  to  Jeho- 
vah's presence  (Ex.  xxxii.  34,  xxxiiir  14;  Is.  Ixiii.  9). 
The  angel  of  the  Lord  thus  appears  as  a  manifestation  of  Jeho- 
vah himself,  one  with  Jehovah  and  yet  distinguishable  from 
him.  How  these  things  could  be  is  not  explained ;  but  the  idea 
was  familiar.  The  objection  has  been  raised  that  neither  the 
prophet  nor  his  hearers  "  conceived  of  the  Messiah,  with  the 
conceiving  of  Christian  theology,  as  a  separate  Divine  personal- 
ity "  (Geo.  A.  Smith,  The  Book  of  Isaiah,  p.  137).  Well, 
what  if  they  did  not?  The  conception  of  distinct  persons  in 
the  Godhead  may  have  been  formed  in  the  minds  of  men  later, 
and  be  quite  true.  Likewise  the  formulated  doctrine  of  the 
incarnation;  it  came  later  because  important  facts  on  which  it 
rests  came  to  man's  knowledge  later.  The  Messiah,  a  descend- 
ant of  David,  is  simply  giv^n  a  unique  divine  name  and  spoken 
of  as  the  possessor  of  divine  attributes.  No  explanation  is  of- 
fered, no  theory  advanced.  It  is  enough  to  know  that  in  th^ 
days  of  the  prophets  the  conception  of  identity  with,  yet  dis- 
tinguishableness  from,  Jehovah  was  present  in  Hebrew  thought 
and  was  consistent  with  the  pure  monotheism  which  was  taught 
in  Israel. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:   A  STUDY 
John  DeWitt 


I 


Introduction.  Relations  between  New  England  aftd  Princeton.  Edwards* 
self-consistent  career.  His  dominating  and  unifying  quality. 
Edwards  and  Emerson.  Likenesses  and  contrasts.  Spirituality 
the  characteristic  of  each. 
I.  Edwards'  Spirituality.  In  what  sense  a  racial  trait  intensified  by« 
Puritanism.  Its  manifestations,  in  his  vision  of  the  spiritual  uni- 
verse, his  self-interpretation,  his  style,  his  emotional  life,  the 
work  he  did,  his  habits,  his  limitations. 
II.  His  intellect  and  work.  Calvin  and  Luther  greater  than  Edwards. 
Edwards'  subtlety  of  intellect.  His  likeness  to  Anselm  of  Canter- 
bury. Lack  of  historical  culture  and  spirit.  His  three  capital 
gifts.  His  distinct  and  complete  world-view.  His  purpose  to 
embody  it  in  the  History  of  Redemption  frustrated  by  death.  His 
portrayal  and  analysis  of  the  religious  life.  His  contributions  to 
theological  science.  The  impetus  he  gave  to  theological  specula- 
tion and  construction.  The  polemic  against  his  Freedom  of  the 
Will.  The  attack  on  him  as  the  author  of  the  sermons  on  the 
punishment  of  the  wicked.  Edwards'  sermons  and  Dante's 
Inferno,    Conclusion. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:   A  STUDY^ 

I  am  deeply  indebted  to  your  Committee  for  the  honor  they 
have  done  me  in  inviting  me  to  take  part  in  this  celebration.  My 
hesitation  in  accepting  their  invitation  was  due  solely  to  the 
feeling  I  had  that  a  son  of  New  England  could  more  appropri- 
ately than  a  stranger  ask  your  attention  to  an  appreciation  of 
this  great  New  Englander.  This  hesitation  was  overcome, 
partly  by  the  cordiality  with  which  the  invitation  was  extended, 
and  partly  by  the  consideration  that  Princeton,  where  Edwards 
did  his  last  work  and  where  his  body  lies  to-day,  might  well 
be  represented  on  the  occasion  by  which  we  have  been  assem- 
bled. Moreover,  Princeton  College,  when  Edwards  was  called 
to  its  presidency,  was  largely  a  New  England  institution  of 
learning.  Both  of  his  predecessors  in  that  office,  Jonathan 
Dickinson  and  Aaron  Burr,  were  natives  of  New  England, 
graduates  of  the  College  at  New  Haven  and  Congregational 
ministers.  Associated  with  Dickinson  and  Burr  in  the  plant- 
ing of  the  College  were  not  only  other  Yale  men,  but  Harvard 
men  also :    Ebenezer  Pemberton  and  David  Cowell  and  Jacob 

^Address  delivered  in  the  Meeting  House  of  the  Parish  Church  of 
Stockbridge,  Mass.,  October  5,  1903,  at  the  celebration,  by  the  Berkshire 
Conferences  of  Congregational  Churches,  of  the  two  hundredth  anni- 
versary of  the  birth  of  Jonathan  Edwards ;  and  repeated  in  Miller  Chapel, 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary,  October  16,  1903.  It  is  reproduced 
here,  because  it  seems  peculiarly  appropriate  that,  in  a  volume  celebrating 
the  Century  of  Princeton  Theological  Seminary,  Jonathan  Edwards  should 
be  commemorated.  He  was  the  earliest  of  the  great  theologians  who  have 
lived  in  Princeton.  When  he  accepted  the  call  to  Princeton  College  he 
expressed  his  willingness  "  to  do  the  whole  work  of  a  professor  of  divin- 
ity ".  He  lived  in  Princeton  only  eight  weeks.  He  came  in  January  and 
died  in  March  1758.  During  the  interval,  his  only  teaching  was  "in 
divinity,"  and  from  the  chair  which  may  be  said  to  have  been  transferred 
from  the  College  to  the  Theological  Seminary  when  the  Seminary  was 
opened  in  1812. 


112  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

Green  and,  above  all,  Jonathan  Belcher,  sometime  Royal  Gov- 
ernor of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  and  ex-officio  Overseer 
of  Harvard,  his  alma  mater;  who,  when  afterward  he  was  com- 
missioned Royal  Governor  of  the  Province  of  New  Jersey,  to 
repeat  his  own  words,  "  adopted  as  his  own  this  infant  Col- 
lege," gave  to  it  a  new  and  more  liberal  charter,  and  so  largely 
aided  it  by  private  gifts  and  official  influence  that  its  Trustees 
called  him  its  "  founder,  patron  and  benefactor  ".  I  am  glad 
as  a  Princeton  tnan  to  find  in  the  anniversary  of  the  birth  of 
one  of  its  Presidents  an  opportunity  to  acknowledge  the  Uni- 
versity's great  debt  to  New  England.  And,  if  you  will  permit 
a  personal  remark,  I  cannot  forget  that  in  coming  to  these 
services  I  am  returning  to  the  Commonwealth  of  which  I  am 
proud  to  have  been  a  citizen,  and  to  the  Massachusetts  Associa- 
tion of  Congregational  Ministers  whose  list  of  pastors  for 
six  successive  years  contained  my  name.^  I  should  have  to 
efface  the  memory  of  a  pastorate  exceptionally  happy,  and  of 
unnumbered  acts  of  kindness  from  the  living  and  the  dead,  in 
order  not  to  feel  grateful  and  at  home  to-day. 

But,  after  all,  the  highest  justification  of  this  commemora- 
tion of  a  man  born  two  centuries  ago  is  not  that  his  genius  and 
character  and  career  reflect  glory  on  the  people  and  the  class 
from  whom  he  sprang,  but  that  they  contain  notable  elements 
of  universal  interest  and  value.  The  great  man  is  great  be- 
cause in  some  great  way  he  adequately  addresses,  not  what  is 
exceptional,  not  what  is  distinctive  of  any  class  or  people,  but 
what  is  human  and  common  to  the  race;  to  whose  message, 
therefore,  men  respond  as  men ;  whose  eulogists  and  interpre- 
ters are  not  necessarily  dwellers  in  his  district  or  people  of  his 
blood;  who  is  the  common  property  of  all  to  study,  to  enjoy, 
to  revere  and  to  celebrate.  It  is,  above  all,  because  Jonathan 
Edwards  belongs  to  this  small  and  elect  class  that  we  are  gath- 
ered to  honor  his  memory  by  recalling  his  story  and  reflecting 
on  the  elements  of  his  greatness. 

It  would  be  inappropriate,  certainly  in  this  place  and  before 
this  audience,  for  a  stranger  to  repeat  the  well-known  story 
of  his  life.     I  shall  better  meet  your  expectations  if  I  shall 

*  Pastor  of  the  Central  Church,  Boston,  from  Dec.  1869  to  Jany.  1876. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  II3 

reproduce  the  impressions  of  the  man  made  on  me  by  a  re- 
newed study  of  his  collected  writings  and  his  life. 

We  shall  agree  that  the  inward  career  of  Edwards  was  sin- 
gularly self-consistent;  that  from  its  beginning  to  its  close  it 
is  exceptionally  free  from  incongruities  and  contradictions; 
that  in  him  Wordsworth's  line,  "  The  child  is  father  to  the 
man,"  finds  a  signal  illustration.  When  we  are  brought  into 
contact  with  a  life  so  unified,  whose  development  along  its 
own  lines  has  not  been  hindered  or  distorted  by  external  dis- 
turbances as  violent  even  as  that  suffered  by  Edwards  at  North- 
ampton, we  naturally  look  for  its  principle  of  unity,  the  domin- 
ating quality  which  subordinated  to  itself  all  the  others,  or,  if 
you  like,  which  so  interpenetrated  all  his  other  traits  as  to  be- 
come his  distinctive  note.  We  are  confident  that  such  a  qual- 
ity there  must  have  been,  and  that  if  we  are  happy  enough  at 
once  to  find  it,  we  shall  have  in  our  possession  the  master  key 
which,  so  far  as  may  be  to  human  view,  will  open  to  us  the  de- 
partments of  his  thought  and  feeling  and  activity. 

A  century  later  than  Edwards  there  was  born  another  great 
New  Englander — Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — between  whom  and 
Edwards  there  is  a  strong  likeness  as  well  as  a  sharp  contrast. 
Because  this  is  his  centennial  year,  Emerson  like  Edwards  is 
just  now  especially  present  to  our  minds,  and  one  is  tempted 
to  compare  and  contrast  the  two.  To  this  temptation  I  shall 
not  yield.  But  in  order  that  we  may  properly  approach  and 
seize  for  ourselves  a  fine  formula  of  Edward's  dominant  qual- 
ity, permit  me  to/ecaii  to  you  a  study  of  Emerson  by  a  littera- 
teur of  great  charm  and  wide  acceptance.  Mr.  Matthew  Arn- 
old in  his  well-known  lecture,  says  that  Emerson  is  "  not  a 
great  poet ",  he  "  is  not  a  great  man  of  letters  ",  he  *'  is  not 
a  great  philosopher  ".  Mr.  Arnold,  I  think,  does  great  injus- 
tice to  Emerson  in  two  of  these  negations.  If  I  did  not  think 
so  I  should  not  associate  him  with  so  great  a  man  as  Edwards. 
I  am  not,  indeed,  concerned  to  defend  the  claims  of  Emerson 
to  "a  place  among  the  great  philosophers  ".  His  treatment  of 
particular  subjects  was  marked  by  discontinuity;  and  his  ten- 
dency to  gnomic,  sententious  forms  of  speech  betrayed  him  not 
seldom  into  overstatement  or  exaggeration.     Now,  than  dis- 


114  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

continuity  and  overstatement  there  can  scarcely  be  conceived 
more  deadly  foes  to  system-building,  to  the  construction  of  a 
world-theory ;  and  the  construction  of  a  world-theory  is  the  end 
of  all  philosophizing.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  Emerson 
ever  permitted  himself  to  rest  in  any  fixed  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse. I  have  the  impression  that  for  a  fixed  view  of  the  uni- 
verse he  never  felt  the  need,  and  that  from  all  actual  views  of 
the  universe  which  have  been  fixed  in  formulas  he  revolted. 
And,  therefore;  when  Mr.  Arnold  says,  "  Emerson  cannot  be 
called  with  justice  a  great  philosophical  writer — he  cannot 
build,  he  does  not  construct  a  philosophy,"  I  do  not  know  on 
what  grounds  we  can  dissent  from  his  statement. 

But  when  he  goes  further  and,  with  the  same  positiveness, 
says,  "  We  have  not  in  Emerson  a  great  writer  or  a  great  poet," 
Mr.  Arnold  passes  from  the  region  of  opinion  based  on  consid- 
erations whose  force  all  estimate  alike,  into  the  region  of  opin- 
ion which  has  its  source  and  ground  in  mere  individual  tem- 
perament and  taste.  Moreover,  greatness  is  a  word  so  vague 
as  scarcely  to  raise  a  definite  issue;  and  this  fact  might  well 
have  prevented  so  careful  and  acute  a  critic  from  employing 
it  to  deny  to  Emerson  a  quality  which  Mr.  Arnold  would  have 
found  difficult  to  define.  Certainly  this  much  can  be  said.  If 
Emerson  is  not  "a  great  writer,  a  great  man  of  letters,"  yet, 
in  his  unfolding  of  ideas  and  in  his  portrayal  and  criticism  of 
nature  and  of  life,  he  has  nobly  fulfilled  and  is  still  fulfilling  the 
function  of  a  great  man  of  letters  to  thousands  of  disciplined 
minds;  interpreting  for  them  and  teaching  them  to  interpret 
nature  and  man,  educating  their  judgments,  cultivating  their 
taste,  introducing  them  to  '*  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and 
written,"  and  stimulating  and  ennobling  their  whole  intellectual 
life.  And  if  he  is  not,  as  Mr.  Arnold  says  he  is  not,  *'  senuous 
and  impassioned  "  in  his  poetry,  we  must  not  forget  that  reflec- 
tive poetry  is  Emerson's  best  and  most  characteristic  poetic 
achievement ;  that  reflective  poetry  cannot  possibly  be  "  sensu- 
ous and  impassioned  " ;  and  that  Mr.  Arnold  is  prejudiced 
against  all  reflective  poetry,  and,  indeed,  does  not  think  it 
poetry,  whether  it  be  Emerson's  or  Wordsworth's. 

But  though  Mr.  Arnold  does  Emerson  injustice  in  these  two 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  115 

negative  propositions;  I  think  that,  in  his  positive  statement, 
he  has  firmly  seized  and  happily  formulated  Emerson's  dom- 
inating quality.  He  has  given  us  the  real  clue  to  the  signifi- 
cance of  Emerson's  literary  product,  regarded  as  a  whole,  when 
he  says  of  him :  "  Emerson  is  the  friend  and  aider  of  those 
who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  The  friendship  of  Emerson  for 
"  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit  "  is,  indeed,  his  character- 
istic trait.  He  is  also  their  "aider ",  as  Mr.  Arnold  says. 
But  the  aid  he  offers  them  is  conditioned  precisely  by  the  fact 
that  he  is  a  man  of  letters  and  a  poetic  interpreter  of  nature 
and  of  life,  and  that  he  does  not  bring  to  them  a  philosophy. 
I  say,  the  aid  he  offers  is  conditioned  by  this  lack  of  a  philos- 
ophy; and  by  conditioned  I  mean  limited.  For  because  of  it 
the  realm  of  nature  and  spirit,  as  he  presents  it,  is  vast  indeed, 
but  vague  and  undefined  and,  so  far  forth,  unrevealed.  And 
therefore,  as  Mr.  Arnold  himself  points  out,  his  aid  is  confined 
to  the  sphere  of  the  moral  sentiments  and  action.  Mr.  Arn- 
old does,  indeed,  express  the  opinion  that  ''  as  Wordsworth's 
poetry  is  the  most  important  work  done  in  verse  in  our  lan- 
guage in  the  nineteenth  century,  so  Emerson's  essays  are  the 
most  important  work  done  in  prose."  But  this  is  the  language 
of  purely  personal  judgment.  Far  more  important  for  us  in 
estimating  Emerson,  with  Mr.  Arnold's  help,  as  "  an  aider  of 
those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit,"  is  the  sentence  in  which 
he  formulates  the  precise  content  of  the  aid  which  Emerson 
extends.  And  this  is  the  sentence :  *'  Happiness  in  labor, 
righteousness  and  veracity;  in  all  the  life  of  the  spirit;  happi- 
ness and  eternal  hope — that  was  Emerson's  gospel."  A  fair 
and  felicitous  description  it  is.  And  how  clearly  it  reveals 
the  limit  of  the  aid  which  Emerson's  gospel  offers !  How  clear- 
ly it  reveals  that  the  aid  extended  is  not  the  aid  of  a  great 
thinker  in  the  sphere  of  ultimate  knowing  and  absolute  being, 
but  is  aid  confined  to  the  sphere  of  the  moral  sentiments  and 
action ! 

Thus,  by  a  route  somewhat  circuitous  indeed,  but  I  trust  not 
wholly  without  interest  or  propriety,  we  reach,  in  Mr.  Arnold's 
characterization  of  Emerson,  the  formula  of  which  I  spoke  as 
finely  expressing  Edward's  dominating  and  unifying  quality. 


Il6  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

Edwards  like  Emerson  is,  above  all  else  and  by  eminence,  "  the 
friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  Who 
that  knows  him  at  all  will  deny  to  him  a  right  equal  to  that  of 
Emerson  to  this  high  title?  Of  course,  they  dififer  widely  both 
in  the  aid  they  offer  and  in  their  methods  of  offering  it.  Emer- 
son's aid  is  conditioned  and  limited,  as  I  have  already  said,  by 
his  want  of  a  firm  and  self-consistent  doctrine  of  the  uni- 
verse, by  his  want  of  a  philosophy.  And  we  must  be  just  as 
ready  to  acknowledge  that  Edwards'  aid.  is  as  clearly  condi- 
tioned and  limited  by  his  unfortunate  j>overty  in  the  humani- 
ties, by  his  notable  lack  of  feeling  for  poetry  and  letters.  On 
the  other  hand  and  positively  I  think  we  may  say,  that  it 
would  be  hard  to  name  a  man  of  letters  who,  having  separated 
himself  from  all  formulated  philosophical  and  religious  be- 
liefs, has  more  nearly  than  Emerson  exhausted  the  resources 
of  letters  and  poetry  in  the  service  of  "  those  who  would  live 
in  the  spirit."  And  among  the  great  doctors  of  the  Christian 
Church,  it  would  be  as  hard  to  namye  one  more  distinctively 
spiritual  in  character  and  aim  than  Edwards,  or  one  who,  in 
cultivating  the  spiritual  life  in  himself  and  promoting  it  in 
others,  has  more  consistently  or  more  ably  drawn  on  the  re- 
sources of  his  philosophy,  his  world-view,  his  Christian  doc- 
trine of  the  universe. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  this  obvious  likeness  and  difference  be- 
tween Edwards  and  Emerson  is  the  right  point  of  departure 
for  any  large  study  of  their  affinity  and  opposition.  Such  a 
study  the  day  invites  us  to  mention,  but  does  not  permit  us  to 
undertake.  The  day  belongs,  not  to  the  great  Puritan  who 
gave  up  the  Puritan  conception  of  the  universe  for  its  interpre- 
tation by  poetry  and  letters,  but  to  the  great  Puritan  who  denied 
himself  the  high  satisfactions  of  literature,  that  through  his 
distinctively  Christian  doctrine  of  God  and  man  he  might  be 
"  the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit." 
It  is  to  his  spirituality,  and  to  his  intellectual  gifts  and  work, 
that  I  ask  your  attention. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  117 


I. 

How  many  writers  have  portrayed  what  one  of  them  calls 
the  "  spirituality  of  mind  "  of  the  Northern  and  Teutonic  peo- 
ples! One  of  the  most  striking  passages  in  Taine's  English 
Literature  contrasts  in  this  particular  the  Latin  and  Teutonic 
races.  And  a  New  England  theologian  and  man  of  letters,  in 
unfolding  the  truth  that  the  Northern  nations  of  Europe,  unlike 
the  Southern,  were  "  spiritual  in  their  modes  of  thought ", 
calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  "  the  Northern  heathen  had 
fewer  gods  than  the  Southern,  and  could  believe  in  their 
reality  without  the  aid  of  visible  form.  He  hewed  no  idol, 
and  he  erected  no  temple ;  he  worshipped  his  divinity  in  spirit, 
beneath  the  open  sky,  in  the  free  air."  How  far  this  spiritual 
temper  can  be  attributed  to  climate,  to  **the  influences  which 
rained  down  from  the  cold  Northern  sky,"  we  cannot  say.  Racial 
character  would  best  be  accepted  as  an  ultimate  fact.  The 
fact  itself  is  certain,  that  among  the  European  peoples,  the 
race  to  which  Edwards  belonged  was  most  strongly  marked 
by  this  spiritual  quality.  Moreover,  it  was  precisely  by  the 
greater  strength  and  intensity  of  this  racial  quality  that  the 
Puritan  class  was  separated  as  a  class  from  their  own  people. 
Spirituality  is  what  the  logicians  call  the  specific  difference  of 
Puritanism.  The  unshaken  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  spiritual 
universe,  the  ability  to  realize  its  elements  without  the  aid  of 
material  symbols,  the  strong  impulse  to  find  motives  to  action 
in  the  unseen  and  eternal,  to  feed  the  intellect  and  the  heart 
on  spiritual  objects,  and  in  distinctively  spiritual  experiences  or 
exercises  to  discern  the  highest  joys  and  the  deepest  sorrows 
and  the  great  crises  of  life — these  were  the  traits  of  the  Puri- 
tans. And  these  traits  were  exhibited,  not  by  a  few  cloistered 
souls  who  obeyed  the  "  counsels  of  perfection  "  and  were  se- 
cluded from  their  fellows  by  special  vows  of  poverty,  celibacy 
and  obedience,  but  by  the  mass  of  the  population  in  Puritan 
New  England;  by  countrymen  and  villagers  and  citizens  and 
statesmen.  This  spirituality  organized  the  governments  and 
determined  the  politics  of  vigorous  commonwealths.     Theo- 


Il8  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

cratic  republics,  as  spiritual  as  that  which,  under  Savonarola, 
had  so  short  a  life  in  Florence,  flourished  for  generations 
on  American  soil.  It  was  in  this  Puritan  society  that  Jonathan 
Edwards'  American  ancestors  lived.  They  were  typical  Puri- 
tans, justly  esteemed  and  influential  in  the  communities  in 
which  they  dwelt.  The  convictions,  traditions  and  spirit  of 
the  class  were  theirs.  This  was  especially  true  of  both  his 
father  and  his  mother.  The  simplicity,  the  sincerity,  the 
spirituality  of  Puritanism  at  its  best  were  incarnate  in  them; 
and  it  was  the  Puritan  ideal  of  life  which,  before  his  birth, 
they  prayed  might  be  actualized  in  their  unborn  child. 

Belonging  to  this  spiritual  race,  sprung  from  this  spiritual 
class,  descended  from  such  an  ancestry  and  born  of  such  a 
parentage,  we  have  the  right  to  anticipate  that  his  dominant 
quality  will  be  this  spirituality  of  which  I  have  spoken.  We 
have  the  right  to  look  for  what  Dr.  Egbert  Smyth  calls,  "  Ed- 
wards' transcendent  spiritual  personality,"  and  concerning 
which  he  says,  that  "  the  spiritual  element  "  in  Edwards  ''  is 
not  a  mere  factor  in  a  great  career,  a  strain  in  a  noble  charac- 
ter. It  is  his  calmest  mood  as  well  as  his  most  impassioned 
warning  or  pleading,  his  profoundest  reasoning,  his  clearest 
insight,  his  widest  outlook.  It  is  the  solid  earth  on  which  he 
treads."  Dr.  Smyth  has  thus  stated  in  suggestive  phrase  the 
supreme  truth  concerning  Edwards ;  the  truth  that  his  dominat- 
ing quality,  his  differentiating  trait,  his  prevailing  habit  of 
m^nd,  is  spirituality.  The  time  at  my  disposal  does  not  per- 
mit the  illustration  of  this  great  quality  in  any  adequate  way. 
I  can  only  touch  on  a  few  particulars  which  may  help  us  better 
to  appreciate  it. 

The  careful  student  of  Edwards  is  deeply  impressed,  first  of 
all,  by  his  immediate  vision  of  the  spiritual  universe  as  the 
reality  of  realities.  When  I  speak  of  the  spiritual  universe, 
I  am  giving  a  name  to  no  indefinite  object  of  thought.  I 
mean  God  in  his  supernatural  attributes  of  righteousness  and 
love,  the  moral  beings  created  in  his  image,  the  relations  be- 
tween them  and  the  thoughts  and  feelings  and  activities  which 
emerge  out  of  these  relations.  This  was  the  universe  in  which 
Edwards  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being.     As  he  appre- 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  119 

hended  it,  it  was  no  mere  subjective  experience,  no  mere  plexus 
of  sensations  and  thoughts  and  volitions.  It  was  the  one 
fundamental  substance  and  the  one  real  existence.  It  was  the 
one  objective  certainty  which  stands  over  against  the  shadowy 
and  illusory  phenomena  that  we  group  under  the  title  matter. 
And  his  vision  of  it  was  vivid  and  in  a  sense  complete.  He 
knew  it  not  only  in  its  several  parts,  but  as  a  whole;  as  an 
ordered  universe ;  as  the  macrocosm  which  he,  the  microcosm, 
reflected  and  to  which  he  responded. 

All  this  is  true  in  a  measure,  to  be  sure,  of  all  the  other 
saints  and,  indeed,  of  the  sinners  also.  It  is  in  what  I  have 
called  the  immediacy  of  his  spiritual  apprehension  that  his 
distinction  lies.  There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  the  spirit- 
ual world  is  immediately  discerned  by  all  of  us.  It  is  of  spirit 
rather  than  of  matter  that  our  knowledge  is  direct.  That 
consciousness  of  a  self  which  cannot  be  construed  in  terms  of 
matter,  or  that  idea  of  self  which  is  a  necessary  postulate  of  all 
our  thinking  brings  us  at  once  into  the  universe  of  spirit.  But 
in  order  to  the  vivid  realization  of  this  spiritual  universe,  there 
is  necessary  for  the  most  of  us  a  special  activity  or  exper- 
ience. And  by  this  activity  or  experience  our  realization  of 
the  spiritual  world  is  mediated.  Edwards,  in  this  respect,  is 
a  remarkable  exception  in  his  own  class.  Consider  some  great 
and  notable  men  of  the  spiritual  type.  Consider  St.  Augustine. 
How  true  it  is  that  the  great  elements  of  the  spiritual  world 
became  vivid  to  Augustine  through  the  mediation  of  his  ex- 
perience of  sin !  And  that  these  spiritual  elements  were  always 
interpreted  by  the  aid  of  that  experience  his  Confessions  abund- 
antly testify.  Or  think  of  Dante.  As  Augustine  reveals  in  his 
Confessions  the  instrumental  relation  to  his  deepening  spirit- 
uality of  the  long  period  of  sinful  storm  and  stress.  Dante 
makes  perfectly  clear  to  us  in  The  New  Life  that  it  was  the 
love  of  Beatrice  which  so  mediated  for  him  the  spiritual  world 
and  so  brought  him  under  its  sway,  that  in  order  to  repeat  and 
interpret  the  vision  of  it  he  laid  under  contribution  his  total 
gifts  and  learning.  Or  take  John  Calvin.  That  fruitful  con- 
ception— more  fruitful  in  church  and  state  than  any  other  con- 
ception which  has  held  the  English-speaking  world — of  the  ab- 


I20  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

solute  and  universal  sovereignty  of  the  Holy  God  as  a  revolt 
from  the  conception  then  prevailing  of  the  sovereignty  of  the 
human  head  of  an  earthly  church,  was  historically  the  media- 
tor of  his  spiritual  career. 

Now  Edwards  is  distinguished  from  Augustine,  Dante  and 
Calvin  by  the  fact  that  his  intuition  of  the  spiritual  universe 
was,  in  the  sense  which  I  have  used  the  word,  immediate.  To 
a  degree  I  should  be  unwilling  to  affirm  of  any  other  man  I 
have  studied,  except  one,  his  spirituality  was  natural.  That  he 
was  a  sinner,  needing  regeneration  and  atonement,  he  knew. 
That  these  were  his  blessed  experience  he  was  gratefully  as- 
sured. But  except  the  apostle  called  by  eminence  "  the  Theo- 
logian ",  St.  John  the  Divine,  I  know  no  other  great  character 
in  Church  History  of  whom  it  can  so  emphatically  be  said,  that 
when  he  "  breathed  the  pure  serene  "  of  the  spiritual  world 
and  gazed  upon  its  outstanding  features,  or  explored  its  re- 
cesses, or  studied  the  inter-relations  of  its  essential  elements, 
he  did  so  as  "  native  and  to  the  manner  born  ".  To  quote 
again  the  words  of  Dr.  Smyth :  "  It  is  the  solid  earth  on  which 
he  treads,  its  sleeping  rocks  and  firm-set  hills." 

The  spiritual  universe,  thus  vividly  and  immediately  appre- 
hended as  the  reality  of  realities,  of  course,  became,  in  turn,  the 
interpreter  to  himself  of  all  he  did  and  felt.  It  became  even 
the  regnant  principle  of  his  association  of  ideas,  so  that  the 
unpurposed  movements  of  his  mind  in  reverie  were  determined 
by  it.  How  influential  in  his  earliest  thinking  it  was,  you  will 
see  if  you  study  his  Notes  on  mind  and  ultimate  being ;  and  how 
persistent  it  was,  you  will  see  in  his  latest  observations  on  The 
End  of  God  in  Creation.  It  governed  his  sesthetics  also.  The 
line  between  aesthetic  emotion  and  spiritual  feeling  is  sharp, 
and  wide,  and  deep.  Often  as  the  two  are  confounded  by  those 
whose  sensibilities  are  strongly  stirred  by  beauty  in  nature 
or  in  fine  art,  it  is  still  true  that  they  are  as  distinct  as  spirit 
and  matter.  The  aesthetic  emotion  is  ultimate  and  never  can 
be  made  over  into  spiritual  afifection.  No  one  knew  this  better 
than  Edwards.  But  through  both  reflection  and  experience  he 
reached  and  formulated  the  conclusion,  that  the  highest  and 
most  enduring  aesthetic  emotion  is  that  which  is  called  out  not 


I 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  121 

by  material  beauty  but  by  holiness.  And  he  may  be  said  to 
have  unfolded  the  great  mediaeval  phrase,  "  The  beatific  vision 
of  God  ",  into  the  doctrine  of  the  highest  beauty,  in  his  epoch- 
making  treatise — epoch-making  in  America  certainly  the  treat- 
ise was — on  The  Nature  of  Virtue.  This  seems  to  me  a  strik- 
ing instance  of  the  v^ay  in  w^hich  his  spirituality  permeated  and 
irradiated  his  thinking. 

I  think  that  even  the  traits  of  Edwards'  style  are  best  ex- 
plained by  this  same  quality.  It  has  often  been  said  of  him  that 
style  is  precisely  what  Edwards  lacked.  We  are  told  that, 
after  reading  Clarissa  Harlowe,  he  expressed  regret  that  in 
his  earlier  years  he  did  not  pay  more  attention  to  style.  We 
may  be  thankful  certainly  that  he  did  not  form  his  style  on  that 
of  the  affluent  Richardson.  I  am  unable  to  share  the  regret 
he  expressed ;  unless,  indeed,  it  was  a  regret  that  he  did  not  al- 
ways take  pains  to  make  his  literary  product  eminent  in  the 
qualities  of  style  which  always  marked  it.  Edwards  was  above 
all  things  sincere;  and  his  style  is  the  man.  Its  qualities  are 
clearness,  severe  simplicity,  movement  and  force.  In  these  he 
is  eminent,  almost  as  eminent  as  John  Locke;  and  he  is  more 
eminent  in  his  later  than  in  his  earlier  compositions.  They 
finely  fit  his  theme  and  his  spirit.  His  theme  in  substance  is 
one.  It  is  the  spiritual  universe,  in  some  aspect  of  it.  And  his 
spirit  is  that  of  a  man  dominated  by  those  spiritual  affections 
which  he  teaches  us  are  a  lively  action  of  the  will.  It  was  ap- 
propriate that  his  style  should  be  calm  and  severe,  and  that  even 
in  his  sermons  it  should  lack  the  dilation  and  rhythm  of  a  rapt 
prophet's  emotional  utterance.  Edwards  was  no  Montanist. 
He  was  a  seer,  indeed,  but  a  seer  with  a  clear  vision ;  and  the 
spirit  of  the  prophet  was  subject  to  the  prophet.  No  man  of  his 
day  was,  so  far  as  I  know,  the  subject  of  stronger  or  deeper 
spiritual  affections.  But  no  one  knew  better  just  what  spiritual 
affections  are.  He  knew  especially  how  different  they  are  from 
mere  sensibility;  and  he  was  always  calm  under  their  sway. 
No  other  style  than  his  could  have  so  well  reflected  and  ex- 
pressed this  spiritual,  unhysterical  man.  And  I  must  believe 
that  his  is  the  direct  fruit  of  his  spiritual  quality.  Certainly, 
it  was  spiritually  effective.     Never  did  any  one's  discourse 


122  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

make  a  more  powerful  and  at  the  same  time  a  more  distinctive- 
ly and  exclusively  spiritual  impression  on  audience  or  readers. 
One  of  the  most  charming  modern  poems  is  that  in  which 
Tennyson  portrays  the  Lady  Godiva,  that  she  might  take  the 
tax  from  off  her  people,  riding  at  high  noon  through  Coventry 
**  naked,  but  clothed  on  with  chastity."  So  seem  to  me  the 
bare  and  unadorned  sermons  and  discussions  of  Edwards. 
Straight  through  his  subject  to  his  goal  this  master  moves; 
unadorned  yet  not  unclothed,  but  clothed  upon  with  spirituality. 

Or  consider  Edwards'  emotional  life.  Dr.  Allen,  of  Cam- 
bridge, in  his  paper  on  The  Place  of  Edwards  in  History  has 
dwelt  fondly  on  what  he  calls  the  spiritual  affinity  between 
Dante  and  Edwards.  He  makes  the  remark,  that  "  the  deepest 
affinity  of  Edwards  was  not  that  with  Calvin  or  with  Augus- 
tine, but  with  the  Florentine  poet."  Now,  I  am  sure,  that  of 
his  affinity  with  Augustine  and  with  Calvin  Edwards  was  dis- 
tinctly conscious.  But  nowhere,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  there  the 
slightest  intimation  that  he  had  any  interest  in  Dante's  New 
Life  or  The  Divine  Comedy.  He  was  no  idealizing  poet,  no 
literary  artist,  no  allegorizer ;  and  he  seems  to  have  taken  little 
or  no  pleasure  in  this  kind  of  literature.  Had  there  been  a  fun- 
damental sympathy  between  Dante  and  Edwards,  it  would  have 
expressed  itself  in  Edwards'  works  with  Edwards'  character- 
istic distinctness.  But  not  only  is  Dante  not  mentioned,  but, 
what  is  more  striking,  there  is  not  an  allusion,  I  think,  in  Ed- 
wards' works  to  the  poems  of  the  Puritan  John  Milton  or  the 
allegories  of  the  Puritan  John  Bunyan.  This  seems  inexpli- 
cable on  Dr.  Allen's  theory  of  a  strong  affinity  between  the  New 
England  theologian  and  the  Florentine  poet.  Most  unhappy, 
however,  is  the  palmary  instance  of  this  alleged  affinity  selected 
by  Dr.  Allen  for  remark.  It  is  what  he  calls  the  striking  spir- 
itual likeness  between  Dante's  words  touching  his  first  sight 
of  Beatrice  and  Edwards'  description  of  Sarah  Pierpont.  I 
refer  to  them,  not  to  criticise  Dr.  Allen,  but  because  the  strik- 
ing contrast  between  them  helps  us  the  better  to  appreciate  the 
regnancy  of  Edwards'  spiritual  quality,  even  when  he  was 
under  the  spell  of  earthly  love. 

And  the  contrast  is  striking.     Dante  in  noble  and  beautiful 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  123 

words  describes  the  dress  that  Beatrice  wore.  "  Her  dress  on 
that  day  was  a  most  noble  color,  a  subdued  and  goodly  crimson, 
girded  and  adorned  in  such  sort  as  best  suited  with  her  tender 
age."  He  exalts  her  in  a  way  which  Edwards  would  have  se- 
verely reproved,  in  the  words,  "  Behold  the  deity  which  is 
stronger  than  I,  who  coming  to  me  will  rule  within  me."  And 
he  confesses  in  powerful  and  poetic  phrases  the  violent  effect 
upon  his  body  which  his  strong  emotion  produced.  The  whole 
picture  is  charming,  poetic,  ideal,  and  was  written  in  a  book 
for  the  public  years  after  the  boy  had  seen  a  girl.  The  greatest 
poet  of  his  time,  if  not  of  all  time,  in  maturer  life  looks  back 
upon  the  meeting  and,  with  consummate  art,  I  do  not  say  with 
insincerity,  transfigures  it. 

How  different  is  Edwards'  well-known  description  of  Sarah 
Pierpont!  It  was  written  in  Edwards'  youth,  four  years  be- 
fore his  marriage ;  not  in  a  book  for  the  public,  but  on  a  blank 
leaf  for  his  own  eye.  In  its  own  way  it  is  as  engaging  as 
Dante's.  But  its  way  is  not  artistic  or  imaginative  at  all.  It  is 
distinctively  and  exclusively  spiritual.  There  is  no  idealization, 
no  translation  of  the  object  of  his  love  into  a  symbol,  no  physi- 
cal transport,  no  agitation,  no  "  shaking  of  the  pulses  of  the 
body."  We  learn  nothing  of  Sarah  Pierpont's  dress  or  appear- 
ance or  temperament.  All  he  tells  us  about  her  is  about  her 
spiritual  qualities  and  her  relations  to  the  spiritual  universe. 
And  at  the  last,  on  his  deathbed,  he  sends  to  his  absent  wife, 
this  Sarah  Pierpont,  his  love;  and  again  speaks  of  the  uncom- 
mon union  between  them,  as,  he  trusts,  spiritual  and  therefore 
immortal.  Read  in  connection  with  the  brief  references  to 
his  household  life  to  be  found  in  his  biography,  these  passages 
bring  before  us  a  man  whose  closest  and  tenderest  earthly  love 
was  transfigured  not  by  artistic  genius  but  by  what  I  have  called 
his  dominating  spirituality.  And  both  passages  issue  naturally 
out  of  that  spiritual  conception  of  beauty  which  he  has  so  finely 
unfolded  in  the  great  essay  on  Virtue. 

This  same  quality  manifests  itself  in  the  impartiality  and  im- 
personality of  his  feelings  under  conditions  well  calculated  to 
awaken  strong  partial  and  personal  feelings.  Go  through  the 
whole  history  of  the  unfortunate  Northampton  controversy. 


124  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

Read  the  correspondence  of  Edwards,  his  speeches  before  the 
several  Councils  and  the  Farewell  Sermon.  Or  mark  his  be- 
havior under  the  trying  conditions  of  a  recrudescence  in  Stock- 
bridgp  of  the  enmity  shown  at  Northampton.  And  you  will 
see  what  I  mean,  when  I  say  that  his  spirituality  is  exhibited  in 
the  impartiality  of  his  feelings  and  the  impersonality  of  their 
objects.  You  will  agree  with  me  that  in  all  of  it  he  was  true 
to  his  thesis ;  that  private  feelings  must  be  subordinated  to  that 
benevolence,  that  spiritual  love  of  being  in  general,  which  is  the 
essence  of  virtue.  Indeed,  I  recall  no  other  instance  of  a  severe 
and  protracted  trial,  in  which  the  chief  figure  appears  so  un- 
concerned about  everything  except  its  spiritual  significance. 

But  it  is  in  the  work  to  which  he  gave  himself,  in  the  subjects 
on  which  he  labored,  in  his  method  of  treatment,  in  the  con- 
clusions he  reached,  that  Edwards'  spirituality  is  most  impres- 
sively revealed.  He  was  interested  apparently  in  nothing  but 
the  spiritual  universe  and  the  spiritual  life.  Of  course,  the 
whole  of  Edwards  is  not  known  to  us.  We  rarely,  if  ever, 
catch  sight  of  him  in  his  avocations,  so  strong  was  his  sense 
of  vocation.  I  discover  in  him  no  interest  in  politics,  in  litera- 
ture, in  the  plastic  or  even  the  intellectual  arts.  In  distinctively 
intellectual  pursuits  other  than  religious  he  did  at  times  engage. 
But  he  engaged  in  them,  certainly  in  his  maturer  years,  only  in 
order  to  the  thorough  concentration  of  his  powers  on  spiritual 
work.  Thus,  when  his  mind  was  strained  by  excessive  study 
and  would  not  hold  itself  to  a  severely  spiritual  train  of  thought, 
or  when  his  imagination  rose  in  rebellion  and  tempted  him^  he 
whipped  each  into  subjection  by  setting  his  powers  to  the 
solution  of  a  difficult  mathematical  problem;  and  so  he  re- 
gained possession  of  himself  solely  for  high  spiritual  purposes. 
And  how  spiritual  his  purposes  were  let  the  titles  of  his  works 
testify,  from  the  first  published  sermon  to  the  great  treatises 
on  Sin,  Virtue  and  the  Will,  and  finally  the  great  Body  of 
Divinity  in  historical  form,  which  in  his  letter  to  the  Trustees 
of  Princeton  he  describes  as  his  coming  work,  and  in  describing 
which  his  soul  expands  and  his  style,  almost  for  the  first  time, 
becomes  rhythmical. 

We  are  therefore  entitled  to  say  with  emphasis  that  the  dom- 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  125 

inant  quality  of  Edwards  is  spirituality — spirituality  of  mind, 
of  feeling,  of  aim  and  action.  The  spiritual  universe  was  for 
him  not  only  the  most  certain  and  substantial  of  realities,  but 
the  exclusive  object  of  contemplation.  Purely  spiritual  feel- 
ing seems  to  have  filled  in  his  life  the  great  spaces  which  in 
the  lives  of  most  men  are  occupied  by  passionate  sensibilities 
and  aesthetic  pleasures.  Or  we  may  better  say,  that  his  excep- 
tional personality  was  the  alembic  in  which  these  sensibilities 
and  pleasures  were  transmuted  into  the  pure  distillate  of  spirit- 
ual feeling;  until  all  his  outgoing  and  active  affections  rested 
on  spiritual  qualities  and  objects,  and  all  his  reactions  of  emo- 
tion were  the  blessednesses  of  the  spirit.  When  his  will  ener- 
gized and  called  the  great  powers  of  his  intellect  into  action, 
it  was  on  the  most  spiritual  themes  that  his  mind  was  wrought 
with  the  greatest  ease  and  geniality.  Distant  in  manner  and 
reserved  on  most  subjects,  whenever  he  conversed  about  hea- 
venly and  divine  things  of  which  his  heart  was  so  full,  "  his 
tongue  ",  says  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins,  "  was  as  the  pen  of  a  ready 
writer."  The  spiritual  world  so  completely  possessed  him  that 
its  contemplation  and  exposition  seems  never  to  have  tired 
him.  After  receiving  the  invitation  to  Princeton,  he  told  his 
eldest  son  that  for  many  years  he  had  spent  fourteen  hours  a 
day  in  his  study.  Spiritual  thinking  and  feeling  were  thus 
both  his  labor  and  his  recreation. 

This  exclusive  spirituality  of  Edwards  explains  his  lack  of 
charm  and  interest.  For  obviously  he  is  lacking  here.  Com- 
pare with  the  lack  of  interest  in  Edwards  the  interest  the 
world  has  always  taken  in  Luther,  in  the  stormy  career  of 
Knox,  in  the  incessant  and  varied  activity  of  Calvin,  and 
earlier  than  these  in  the  dramatic  life  of  Augustine.  Shall  we 
say  that  he  charms  us  less  because  he  was  a  more  spiritual  man, 
or  only  because  he  was  more  exclusively  spiritual;  because  he 
was  less  wealthily  endowed  with  humane  sympathies  ?  Is  it  be- 
cause of  his  delicate  organization  and  feeble  vitality  ?  Or  is  it 
because,  under  the  domination  of  the  spiritual  universe,  and 
knowing  well  his  own  powers  and  limitations,  he  determined 
to  know  this  one  thing  only?  Or  is  it,  after  all,  only  the  defect 
of  his  biographers?     I  do  not  know.     Certainly  he  presents  a 


k 


ia6  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

Striking  contrast  to  the  other  great  spiritual  men  whom  I  have 
named.  And  I  think  we  are  bound  to  acknowledge  that  his 
remarkable  separation  in  spirit  from  the  feelings  and  tastes 
and  occupations  of  the  people  seriously  limited  his  usefulness, 
and  seriously  limits  it  to-day.  But  when  all  is  said,  his  spirit- 
uality is  his  strength.  And  in  a  world  where  social  charm  and 
sympathy  is  abundant,  and  where  high  and  exclusive  spiritual- 
ity is  in  the  greatest  men  as  rare  as  radium ;  we  ought  to  re- 
joice that  of  one  of  the  greatest  it  is  true  that  he  was  bond- 
slave to  the  spiritual  world. 

The  clue  to  Edwards  then,  his  dominating  and  irradiating 
quality,  the  trait  which  gave  unity  to  his  career,  is  his  spirit- 
uality. His  was  indeed,  to  repeat  the  fine  word  of  Dr.  Eg- 
bert Smyth,  "  a  transcendent  spiritual  personality." 

II. 

I  have  detained  you  so  long  on  this  subject  that  I  must  treat 
briefly  and  inadequately  Edwards'  intellect  and  work. 

It  was  as  a  bond-slave  then  to  the  spiritual  universe  that  all 
his  work  was  done.  Now  his  work  was  not  that  of  a  philan- 
thropist or  a  missionary.  It  was  the  work  of  a  thinker.  The 
instrument  with  which  he  wrought  was  his  intellect;  and  the 
word  which  describes  the  quality  as  distinguished  from  the 
subject  of  his  writings  is  the  word,  intellect.  This  is  as  true 
of  his  sermons  as  it  is  of  his  elaborate  treatises.  And,  as  a 
whole,  his  works  constitute  an  intellectual  system  of  the  spir- 
itual universe. 

Eminently  intellectual  in  his  activity,  Edwards,  so  far  as  I 
can  see,  had  no  intellectual  pride.  His  intellect  he  regarded 
simply  as  an  instrument  to  be  employed  in  the  service  of  the 
spiritual  world.  And  as  such  an  instrument,  if  we  would  do 
him  justice,  we  must  regard  it.  We  must  seize  and  estimate 
its  outstanding  traits,  as  they  reveal  themselves  in  this  charac- 
teristic activity  which  he  solemnly  accepted  as  his  vocation. 
What,  then,  were  the  distinctive  traits  of  Edwards'  intellect, 
and  what  position  must  we  assign  to  him  among  intellectual 
men,  especially  among  theologians? 

The  genius  of  Luther  and  that  of  Calvin  have  often  been 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  127 

contrasted.  There  is  a  general  agreement  that  while  Luther 
saw  single  truths  with  the  greater  clearness  and  the  sooner 
recognized  their  capital  value,  to  Calvin  must  be  attributed  in 
greater  measure  the  gift  of  construction;  the  great  gift  by 
which  he  organized  in  a  system  the  principles  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation.  Now  though  Edwards  nowhere  shows  the  bold- 
ness and  originality  of  either  of  these  men;  though  he  never 
inaugurated  a  new  mode  of  Christianity  like  Luther  or  or- 
ganized its  theology  like  Calvin,  and,  therefore,  holds  no 
place  beside  them  in  history;  he  had  both  a  gift  of  penetra- 
tion like  Luther's  and  a  gift  of  construction  like  Calvin's.  It 
is  also  true,  I  think,  that  in  the  subtlety  of  his  intellect  he  was 
greater  than  either.  The  man  of  all  men  whom  he  seems  to  me 
most  like  intellectually  and,  indeed,  every  way — in  the  character 
of  his  religious  experience,  in  his  genial  acceptance  of  the  theo- 
logical system  he  inherited,  in  his  philosophical  insight,  in  his 
power  in  the  exposition  of  abstract  truth,  in  his  fruitfulness, 
in  his  constructive  ability  and  in  his  failure  nevertheless  to 
leave  behind  him  a  completed  system,  in  his  fundamental 
philosophical  and  theological  views,  in  his  idealism  and  Pla- 
tonism — is  Anselm  of  Canterbury.  And,  having  regard  to  the 
works  they  have  left  behind  them — the  one,  the  Monologium 
and  Proslogimn,  the  Tract  on  Predestination,  the  Prayers  and 
Meditations,  the  Essay  on  Free  Will  and  the  Cur  Deus  Homo, 
and  the  other,  the  great  sermons,  the  treatises  on  The  Nature 
of  Virtue,  The  End  of  God  in  Creation,  Original  Sin,  Justifica- 
tion by  Faith,  The  Religious  Affections  and  The  Nature  of  the 
Freedom  of  the  Will — I  think  that  Edwards  stands  fully  abreast 
of  the  mediaeval  philosopher  and  theologian.  Had  Dante 
known  Edwards  as  we  know  him,  he  would  have  given  him  a 
place  beside  Anselm  in  the  Heaven  of  the  Sun. 

In  saying  that  Edwards  is  like  Anselm,  I  have  also  in  mind 
the  fact  that  there  are  two  great  classes  of  theologians.  All 
Christian  theology  rests  on  Holy  Scripture.  But  theologians 
strikingly  differ  among  themselves  in  the  importance  they 
respectively  assign  to  the  history  of  doctrine  and  the  Church's 
symbols  on  the  one  hand;  and  to  the  concord  between  the 
Word  of  God  and  the  reason  on  the  other.     In  the  mediaeval 


128  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

Church  there  were  school  divines  who  rested  solely  on  history 
and  authority ;  who  had  no  confidence  in  the  argument  from  the 
reason ;  who  did  not  believe  that  there  is  a  theologia  naturalis- 
This  tendency  was  strongest,  perhaps,  in  the  Franciscan,  Duns 
Scotus.  In  modern  Protestant  Churches,  the  tendency  is, 
perhaps,  strongest  in  the  high  Anglican  writers.  Now  while 
Edwards  was  in  harmony  with  the  Reformed  Confessions,  the 
absence  of  the  Confessional  or  historical  spirit  is  noticeable 
in  all  his  theological  treatises.  The  lack  of  it  is  explained 
partly  by  his  training.  In  the  curriculum  of  the  American 
Colonial  College  historical  studies  were  slight  and  elementary, 
while  studies  which  discipline  the  powers  were  pursued  with 
a  vigor  and  sincerity  which  the  modern  University  would  do 
well  to  promote.  We  must  regret,  I  think,  the  lack  in  this  great 
American  theologian  of  large  historical  culture  and,  by  con- 
sequence, of  the  historical  spirit.  Because  of  it  there  is,  in  the 
positiveness  of  his  assertions,  in  his  strong  confidence  in  logical 
analysis  and  dialectic  in  themselves,  and  in  his  historical  gen- 
eralizations in  The  History  of  Redemption,  a  quality  which 
it  is  right  to  call  provincial. 

But  if  he  is  defective  at  this  point,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say, 
that  he  is  one  of  the  greatest  Doctors  of  the  Universal  Church 
by  reason  of  his  singular  eminence  in  three  capital  qualities. 
In  the  first  place,  he  is  far  more  powerful  than  most  theologians 
in  his  appeal  to  the  reason  in  man.  I  mean  the  reason  in  its 
largest  sense  and  as  distinguished  from  the  understanding. 
The  reason  itself,  he  held,  as  if  he  were  a  Cambridge  Platonist, 
has  a  large  spiritual  content.  If  I  understand  him,  he  went 
beyond  the  Westminster  Divines  in  the  value  he  put  upon  the 
Light  of  Nature.  Of  his  actual  appeal  to  the  reason,  includ- 
ing under  that  term  the  conscience  and  the  religious  nature, 
I  have  time  only  to  say  that  it  permeates  and  gives  distinction 
to  his  entire  theological  product.  He  addresses  it  with  large 
confidence  in  his  sermons,  in  his  essay  on  The  End  of  God  in 
Creation,  in  his  chapter  on  the  Satisfaction  of  Christ  written 
in  the  very  spirit  of  the  Cur  Deus  Homo,  in  all  his  endeavors 
to  quicken  in  reader  and  hearer  the  sense  of  guilt  and  the  fear 
of  its  punishment,  in  his  great  discourse  on  Spiritual  Light,  and 


I 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  129 

in  his  great  volume  on  the  Religious  Affections.  In  all  of  them 
a  consummate  theologian  of  the  reason  distinctly  appears.  To 
this  we  must  add  his  supremacy  in  the  related  gifts  of  clear 
exposition,  subtle  distinction,  and  acute  polemic.  To  this 
supremacy  the  world  has  borne  abundant  testimony.  If  he  is 
like  Anselm  in  his  high  estimate  of  the  reason,  he  is  like 
Thomas  Aquinas  in  his  dialectical  acuteness.  Nor  is  this  acute- 
ness  mere  quickness  of  vision  and  alertness  in  logical  fence. 
His  two  greatest  polemic  works  are  probably  the  essays  on 
Original  Sin  and  The  Freedom  of  the  Will.  Both  of  them 
are  profound  as  well  as  acute ;  both  are  large  in  their  conception 
of  the  subject;  and  in  both  he  is  fair  to  his  antagonist,  and, 
though  not  so  largely,  yet  as  really  constructive  as  he  is  polemic. 
To  these  we  must  add,  finally,  a  consummate  genius  for  theo- 
logical construction.  No  one  can  go  through  his  collected 
works  even  rapidly,  as  I  was  compelled  to  do  this  summer, 
without  seeing  that  a  self -consistent  World-view  or  theory  of 
the  Universe  was  distinct  and  complete  in  the  consciousness 
of  Edwards,  and  that  it  is  the  living  root  out  of  which  springs 
every  one  of  his  sermons  and  discussions.  No  theological 
writer  is  less  atomistic.  None  is  less  the  prey  of  his  temporary 
impulses  or  aberrations.  No  theological  essays  less  merit  the 
name  of  disjecta  membra.  The  joy  of  the  completed  literary 
presentation  of  this  universal  system,  this  spiritual  and  intel- 
lectual Cosmos,  was  denied  him.  But  it  is  in  his  works,  just 
as  completely  as  Coleridge's  system  is  in  the  Biographia  Liter- 
aria  and  the  Table  Talk,  just  as  clearly  as  Pascal's  Pyrrhonism 
lies  open  to  us  in  his  fragmentary  Thoughts.  Had  he  lived  to 
complete  at  Princeton  his  History  of  Redemption,  his  "  body 
of  divinity  in  an  entire  new  method,"  it  is  my  belief  that  the 
world  would  have  seen  in  it  the  fruit  of  a  constructive  genius 
not  less  great  than  that  which  appears  in  the  Summa  of  St. 
Thomas  or  in  the  Institutes  of  Calvin. 

Though  no  theologian  more  habitually  conceived  the  spiritual 
world  as  objective,  yet  his  great  powers  and  special  talents 
wrought  best,  and  he  produced  his  best  work,  when  he  was 
writing  on  the  religious  life.  That  life  he  knew  well,  because 
of  his  own  profound  and  vivid  religious  experience.     But  he 


130  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

never  wrote  out  his  experience  alone.  The  spiritual  universe 
as  a  whole  is  before  him  as  he  writes.  It  is  always  therefore 
the  ideal  religious  life  of  the  redeemed  sinner  he  is  describing. 
Hence  its  severity,  its  purity,  its  deep  humility  as  it  measures 
itself  with  the  absolute  ethical  and  spiritual  perfection.  If 
we  do  not  wish  to  sink  into  despair,  we  must  not  forget 
this  as  we  read  the  greatest  of  his  tracts,  the  essay  on  The 
Religious  Affections. 

A  theologian,  so  profound  and  so  individual  as  Edwards 
was,  could  not  but  have  made  many  contrtbutions  of  the  highest 
importance  to  theological  science.  Now  whatever  Edwards' 
distinctive  contributions  to  theology  were,  it  is  important  to 
notice  that  they  were  contributions  to  the  historical  theology 
of  the  Christian  Church.  He  was  in  full  concord  with  the 
great  Ecumenical  Councils  on  the  Trinity  and  the  Person  of 
Christ.  He  thoroughly  accepted  the  formal  and  material  prin- 
ciples of  the  Reformation.  And  he  was  convinced  of  the  truth 
of  the  great  system  known  as  Calvinism  or  the  Reformed  The- 
ology. His  greatness  as  a  theologian  and  his  fi-uitfulness  as 
a  writer  are  rooted  in  the  consent  of  his  heart,  as  well  as  the 
assent  of  his  mind,  to  these  historical  doctrines.  And  though, 
as  I  have  said,  individually  he  was  not  distinctly  informed  by 
the  historical  spirit,  yet  he  is  in  the  line  of  the  historical  suc- 
cession of  Christian  theologians. 

Turning  to  these  distinctive  contributions  I  have  time  to 
name  only  one ;  but  that  one  has  been  of  immense  historical  im- 
portance in  America.  Jonathan  Edwards  changed  what  I  may 
call  the  centre  of  thought  in  American  theological  thinking. 
There  were  great  theologians  in  New  England  before  Edwards. 
I  mention  only  John  Norton  of  Ipswich,  and  Samuel  Willard  of 
Harvard.  They  followed  the  Reformed  School  Divines  not 
only  in  making  the  decree  of  God  the  constitutive  doctrine  of 
the  system,  but  in  emphasizing  it.  Edwards  did  not  displace 
the  eternal  Decree  as  the  constitutive  doctrine;  but  by  a 
change  in  emphasis  he  lifted  into  the  place  of  first  importance 
in  theological  thinking  in  America  the  inward  state  of  man  in 
nature  and  in  grace.  He  appears  to  have  been  led  strongly 
to  emphasize  these  related  themes,  partly  by  the  Great  Awak- 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  131 

ening,  and  partly  by  the  controversy  on  the  Half-way  Covenant 
which  followed  it.  No  one,  however,  but  a  man  of  genius  could 
have  made  this  change  in  emphasis  so  potent  a  fact  in  Ameri- 
can Church  history.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  influ- 
ence thus  exerted  by  Edwards  on  American  theological  and 
religious  discussions  and  on  American  religious  life.  If  I 
may  so  say,  here  is  the  open  secret  of  the  New  England  the- 
ology from  Samuel  Hopkins  to  Horace  Bushnell.  And  more 
than  to  any  other  man,  to  Edwards  is  due  the  importance 
which,  in  American  Christianity,  is  attributed  to  the  conscious 
experience  of  the  penitent  sinner,  as  he  passes  into  the  mem- 
bership of  the  Invisible  Church. 

Quite  as  important  as  this  distinctive  contribution  is  the  tre- 
mendous stimulus  and  impetus  he  gave  to  theological  specula- 
tion and  construction.  When  I  think  of  the  Edwardean  School 
of  New  England  theologians  from  Samuel  Hopkins  to  Ed- 
wards Park,  between  whom  are  included  so  many  brilliant  men, 
too  many  even  to  be  named  at  this  time ;  when  I  think  of  the 
Edwardean  theologians  in  my  own  Church,  like  Henry  Boyn- 
ton  Smith  and  William  Greenough  Thayer  Shedd;  when  I 
think  of  the  fruitful  history  of  his  works  in  Scotland  and 
England,  and  recall  his  real  mastery  over  the  minds  he  influ- 
enced ;  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that,  up  to 
this  time,  his  influence  in  the  English-speaking  world — not 
on  all  thinking,  but  on  distinctively  dogmatic  thinking — has 
been  as  great  as  that  of  either  Joseph  Butler  or  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge. 

I  have  thus  endeavored  to  set  before  you  my  impressions  of 
Edwards'  dominating  quality,  his  intellectual  gifts,  and  the 
kind  of  work  he  did ;  and  to  state  the  place  which  in  my  view 
he  holds  among  the  theologians  of  the  Universal  Church.  I 
have  refrained  from  eulogy.  He  is  too  consummate  and 
sincere  a  master  for  us  to  approach  with  the  language  of  com- 
pliment. But  I  should  incompletely  perform  the  duty  you  have 
devolved  upon  me,  did  I  fail  to  speak  of  two  of  his  works 
which  have  been  violently  and  repeatedly  attacked.  One  is 
the  essay  on  The  Freedom  of  the  Will.  The  other  is  the  Ser- 
mons on  the  Punishment  of  the  Wicked. 


132  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

The  essay  on  the  Freedom  of  the  Will  is  essentially  a 
polemic,  and  only  incidentally  a  constructive  treatise.  As  a 
polemic,  therefore,  it  must  be  judged.  He  had  before  his 
mind,  not  the  whole  voluntary  nature  of  man  as  a  subject  to 
be  investigated,  but  the  special  Arminian  doctrine  of  the  liberty 
of  indifference  as  an  error  to  be  antagonized.  What,  there- 
fore, the  essay  shows  is,  not  his  constructive  ability,  but  his 
ability  as  an  antagonist.  I  have  read  carefully  only  one  other 
treatise  in  which  the  propositions  as  obviously  move  forward 
in  procession,  with  steps  as  firmly  locked  together.  This  other 
treatise  is  the  Ethics  of  Spinoza.  If  you  dare  consentingly  to 
follow  Spinoza  through  his  three  kinds  of  knowledge  up  to  his 
definition  of  substance — which,  since  it  is  thought  not  in  a 
higher  category  but  in  itself,  is  self -existent;  which  is  and  can 
be  one  only ;  and  whose  known  attributes  "  perceived  to  be  of 
the  essence  of  this  substance  "  are  infinite  thought  and  infinite 
extension — if  you  follow  Spinoza  thus  far;  you  will  soon  find 
yourself  imprisoned  in  a  universe  of  necessity,  and  bound  in 
it  by  a  chain  of  theorems,  corollaries  and  lemmas  impossible  to 
be  broken  at  any  point.  Your  only  safety  is  in  obeying  the 
precept,  Ohsta  principiis.  Quite  equal  to  Spinoza's  is  Edwards' 
essay  in  its  close  procession  of  ordered  argument.  Like  Spin- 
oza he  begins  his  treatise  with  definitions.  And  I  cannot  see 
how  anyone,  who  permits  himself  to  be  led  without  protest 
through  the  first  of  the  "  Parts  "  of  the  essay,  can  refuse  to  go 
on  with  him  at  any  point  in  the  remaining  three.  In  reading 
the  treatise  one  should,  above  all,  keep  in  view  the  fact  that, 
though  it  is  polemic  against  a  particular  theory,  it  was  writ- 
ten in  the  interest  of  a  positive  theological  doctrine.  I  think 
we  shall  do  justice  to  this  doctrine  if  we  state  it  in  terms  like 
the  following :  "  Man's  permanent  inclination  is  sinful ;  and 
his  sinful  inclination  will  certainly  qualify  his  moral  choices." 
This  Augustinian  doctrine  Edwards  defended  by  a  closely 
reasoned  psychology  of  the  will.  I  am  not  sure  that  this  great 
doctrine,  which  I  heartily  accept,  was  at  all  aided  by  Edwards 
when  he  involved  it  with  and  defended  it  by  a  particular  psy- 
chology. And  my  doubt  is  deepened  by  what  seems  to  me  his 
unnecessary  employment,   in  the   spiritual   sphere,   of   terms 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  133 

taken  from  the  sphere  of  nature,  Hke  "  cause  ",  **  determina- 
tion "  and  "  necessity  ".  I  can  only  call  your  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  defense  of  the  religious  doctrine,  and  not  his  psy- 
chology, was  Edwards'  deepest  anxiety.  And  who  of  us  is 
not  prepared  to  say,  that  the  bad  man's  badness  is  a  perman- 
ent disposition  certain  to  emerge  in  his  ethical  volitions,  and 
that  to  revolutionize  it  there  is  needed  the  forth-putting  of  the 
power  of  the  Holy  Ghost? 

But  it  is  Edwards'  sermons  on  The  Punishment  of  the 
Wicked  which  have  awakened  the  strongest  enmity ;  an  enmity 
expressed  often  in  the  most  violent  terms.  The  rational  and 
Scriptural  basis  of  the  doctrine  and  the  objections  to  it  need 
not  be  set  forth  here.  Edwards  accepted,  defended  and  pro- 
claimed it,  substantially  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  been  taught 
in  the  Greek,  the  Latin  and  the  Protestant  Churches.  It  is  the 
doctrine  of  the  Fathers,  the  mediaeval  Schoolmen  and  the  Pro- 
testant theologians.  Edwards'  doctrine  of  Hell  is  exactly  one 
with  the  doctrine  of  Dante.  Now  it  is  of  interest  to  note  that 
there  is  a  widespread  revulsion  from  Edwards,  considered  as 
the  author  of  these  Sermons,  which  does  not  and  so  far  as  I 
am  aware  never  did  appear  in  the  case  of  Dante,  considered  as 
the  author  of  the  Inferno.  What  is  the  explanation  of  the  dif- 
ference ?  Dante  is  praised  and  glorified  by  not  a  few  of  those 
to  whom  the  name  of  Edwards  is  for  the  same  reason  a  name 
of  "  execration  and  horror  ".  Indeed,  Dante  has  been  defended 
by  a  great  American  man  of  letters  for  rejoicing  in  the  pain 
of  the  damned;  while  no  one  of  Edwards'  sermons,  unless  it 
is  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God,  has  been  more  se- 
verely criticised  as  inhuman  than  the  discourse  entitled.  The 
Torments  of  the  Wicked  in  Hell  no  occasion  of  Grief  to  the 
Saints  in  Heaven.  We  shall  do  well,  therefore,  to  note  the 
contrast  between  Dante's  and  Edwards'  presentation  of  the 
same  subject. 

When  Dante  was  sailing  through  the  Lake  of  Mud  in  the 
Fifth  Circle  of  Hell,  there  appeared  before  him  suddenly 
Philippo  Argenti,  who  in  this  world  was  full  of  arrogance  and 
disdain  of  his  fellowmen,  now  clothed  only  with  the  lake's 
muck.     Pathetically  he  answers  Dante's  inquiry,   "Who  art 


154  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

thou  that  art  become  so  foul  ?  "  with  these  words,  "  Thou  seest 
I  am  one  who  weeps."  And  Dante  replies,  **  With  weeping  and 
with  wailing,  accursed  spirit,  do  thou  remain,  for  I  know  thee 
although  thou  art  all  filthy."  Then  Virgil  clasps  Dante's  neck 
and  kisses  his  face  and  says,  "  Blessed  is  she  who  bore  thee !  " 
And  Dante  replies,  '*  Master,  I  should  much  like  to  see  him 
ducked  in  this  broth  before  we  depart  from  the  lake."  And 
Virgil  promises  that  he  shall  be  satisfied.  "And  after  this  ", 
continues  Dante,  "  I  saw  such  rending  of  him  by  the  muddy 
folk  that  I  still  praise  God  therefor  and  thank  Him  for  it. 
All  cried,  *At  Philippo  Argenti ! '  and  the  raging  Florentine 
spirit  turned  upon  himself  with  his  teeth.  Here  we  left  him; 
so  that  I  tell  no  more  of  him."  This  is  one  of  the  passages  in 
Dante's  poem  of  that  Hell  over  whose  entrance  he  read  these 
words ;  "  Through  me  is  the  way  into  eternal  woe ;  through 
me  is  the  way  among  the  lost  people.  Justice  moved  my  high 
creator;  the  divine  Power,  the  supreme  Wisdom,  and  the 
primal  Love  made  me.  Before  me  were  no  things  created 
unless  eternal,  and  I  eternal  last.  Leave  every  hope,  ye  who 
enter  here." 

There  is  nothing  in  Edwards  which,  so  far  as  I  can  judge, 
equals  this  in  its  horrid  imagery  and  suggestion.  And  yet  men 
enjoy  Dante  and  the  Inferno.  They  do  not  "  execrate  "  him 
for  a  "  monster  ",  as  Dr.  Allen  says  they  do  Edwards.  And  in 
his  great  essay  on  Dante,  Mr.  James  Russell  Lowell  makes  this 
very  scene  the  text  of  an  eloquent  laudation  of  Dante's  moral 
quality,  in  which  he  says  of  him ;  "  He  believed  in  the  righteous 
use  of  anger,  and  that  baseness  was  its  legitimate  quarry." 
Why  is  it  that  the  attitude  of  the  general  public,  thus  repre- 
sented by  Mr.  Lowell,  toward  the  Hell  of  Dante  is  so  differ- 
ent from  the  attitude  of  the  same  public  toward  the  Hell  of  Ed- 
wards? I  think  we  shall  find  an  answer  to  this  question  in 
what  I  may  call  Edwards'  spiritual  realism.  Of  course  Dante 
is  a  realist  also.  How  often  this  quality  of  his  poem  has  been 
pointed  out  to  us!  But  Dante's  is  the  realism  of  the  artist, 
the  poet  who  appeals  to  our  imagination.  Our  imagination 
being  gratified,  we  enjoy  the  picture  and  even  the  sensations  of 
horror  which  the  picture  starts.     Of  all  this  there  is  nothing 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY  135 

in  Edwards.  There  is  no  picture  at  all.  There  is  scarcely  a 
symbol.  Here  and  there  there  is  an  illustration.  But  the 
illustrations  of  Edwards  are  never  employed  to  make  his  sub- 
ject vivid  to  the  imagination.  They  are  intended  simply  to 
explicate  it  to  the  understanding.  The  free,  responsible,  guilty 
and  immortal  spirit  is  immediately  addressed;  and  the  purely 
spiritual  elements  of  the  Hell  of  the  wicked,  separated  from 
all  else,  are  made  to  appear  in  their  terrible  nakedness  before 
the  reason  and  the  conscience.  The  reason  and  the  conscience 
respond.  We  are  angry  because  startled  out  of  our  security. 
And  we  call  him  cruel,  because  of  the  conviction  forced  on 
us  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  terrible,  even  if  mysterious, 
spiritual  reality.  Edwards  always  spoke,  not  to  the  imagina- 
tion, but  to  the  responsible  spirit.  Men  realized  when  he  ad- 
dressed them  that  because  they  are  sinners  their  moral  consti- 
tution judicially  inflicts  upon  their  personality  remorse;  and 
that  remorse  is  an  absolute,  immitigable  and  purely  spiritual 
pain,  independent  of  the  conditions  of  time  and  space  and, 
therefore,  eternal. 

The  Nineteenth  Century,  in  one  of  its  greatest  poets, ^  look- 
ing out  on  nature,  sees  no  relief  from  this  eternity  of  remorse ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  sees  no  evidence,  in  nature's  "  tooth  and  claw  " 
that  God  will  ever  interfere  to  end  this  spiritual  pain  and  pun- 
ishment. It  only  "hopes  "  that,  "at  last,  far  off  ",  "  Winter 
will  turn  to  Spring."  I  shall  not  attack  any  man  for  a  hope, 
maintained  against  the  evidence  of  remorse  within  and  nature 
without,  that  the  mystery  of  pain  and  moral  evil  will  be  thus 
dissipated  in  their  destruction.  It  is  not  my  business  to  de- 
nounce a  thoughtful  and  reverent  spirit  like  Tennyson,  because 
of  any  relief  he  may  individually  find,  when  facing  the  most 
terrible  revelation  of  nature  and  of  his  moral  constitution,  in 
the  "  hope  "  which  issues  from  our  sensibility  to  pain  and  from 
the  sentiment  of  mercy  which  God  has  implanted  in  us  all.  But 
I  do  say,  that  a  man's  private  "  hope  "  should  never  be  ele- 
vated to  the  dignity  of  a  dogma,  or  be  made  a  norm  of  teaching, 
or  be  proposed  as  a  rule  of  action.  And  I  do  protest  that  it  is 
the  height  of  literary  injustice,  while  praising  Dante,  to  con- 

'  In  Memoriam,  liii-lvi. 


136  JONATHAN  EDWARDS:     A  STUDY 

demn  Edwards  the  preacher  because,  in  his  anxiety  to  induce 
men  to  "  press  into  the  kingdom,"  he  preached,  not  the  pri- 
vate hope  of  Lord  Tennyson,  but  the  spiritual  verity  to  which 
the  conscience  of  the  sinner  responds.  Thus,  in  his  treatment 
of  this  darkest  of  subjects,  that  spirituality  which  I  have  said 
was  his  dominant  quality  is  regnant ;  and  here,  too,  he  should 
be  called,  "  the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live 
in  the  spirit." 

With  this  protest  I  conclude.  Let  me  say  again,  that  I 
am  deeply  grateful  to  you  for  the  opportunity  you  have  given 
me  to  unite  with  you  in  this  commemoration  of  the  man  we  so 
often  call  our  greatest  American  Divine.  He  was  indeed 
inexpressibly  great  in  his  intellectual  endowment,  in  his  theo- 
logical achievement,  in  his  continuing  influence.  He  was 
greatest  in  his  attribute  of  regnant,  permeating,  irradiating 
spirituality.  It  is  at  once  a  present  beatitude  and  an  omen  of 
future  good  that,  in  these  days  of  pride  in  wealth  and  all  that 
wealth  means,  of  pride  in  the  fashion  of  this  world  which  pass- 
eth  away,  we  still  in  our  heart  of  hearts  reserve  the  highest 
honor  for  the  great  American  who  lived  and  moved  and  had 
his  being  in  the  Universe  which  is  unseen  and  eternal. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 
William  Brenton  Greene,  Jr. 


I,— Definition,  i.  Though  spiritual,  the  Supernatural :  a.  Is  not  identi- 
cal with  all  the  spiritual,  nor  is  it  plural ;  b.  Its  distinction  is  that  it 
is  the  Uncaused,  the  Self-Subsistent,  the  Autonomous. 

2.  The  points  specially  to  be  guarded  in  this  definition  are : 
a.  The  separateness  of  the  Supernatural  from  the  natural;  b.  Its 
singleness  as  so  separated. 
II. — Importance  of  this  doctrine,  i.  In  Christian  Apologetics.  2.  In 
Christian  Dogmatics.  3.  In  Philosophy.  4.  In  Science.  5.  In 
Ethics.  6.  In  Religion,  Civilization  and'^Human  Achievement.  7. 
In  the  Christian  Religion,  according  to  its  own  claim.  8.  With 
regard  to  the  hope  of  the  world. 

III. — The  Reality  of  the  Supernatural,  i.  The  Question.  2.  The  Oppos- 
ing Theories:  a.  Positivism;  b.  Monism;  c.  Pluralism.  3.  The 
Argument:  a.  From  the  Consent  of  Philosophy;  b.  From  the 
Necessity  of  Religion;  c.  From  the  Necessity  in  Thought. 

IV. — The  Manifestation  of  the  Supernatural,  i.  The  Question,  2.  The 
Opposing  Theories:  a.  Pantheism;  b.  Religious  Positivism;  c. 
Agnosticism.  3.  The  Argument :  a.  From  the  standpoint  of  the 
reality  of  the  Supernatural ;  b.  From  that  of  the  reality  of  the 
natural. 
V. — The  Personality  of  the  Supernatural,  i.  Summary  of  opposing 
views.  2.  Statement  of  true  position.  3.  Argument :  a.  The  Super- 
natural can  be  personal;  b.  The  Supernatural  must  be  at  least 
personal;  c.  The  Supernatural  cannot  be  higher  than  personal. 

VI. — The  Personal,  in  the  sense  of  Immediate,  Manifestation  of  the 
Supernatural,  i.  What  is  meant  by  such  manifestation.  2.  The 
importance  of  the  reality  of  such  manifestation,  not  only  to 
Christianity,  but  to  all  higher  religion.  3.  The  denial  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  miracles  is  based  on  the  assumption  that  nature  is  and 
must  be  uniform.  4.  Proof  of  the  possibility  and  even  of  the 
probability  of  miracles,  i.  e.,  of  supernatural  interventions  in  the 
course  of  nature. 
VII. — Conclusion,  i.  Christianity  is  not  established  as  the  supernatural 
religion :  this  must  still  be  decided  by  the  appropriate  evidence. 
But  2.  the  way,  and  the  only  way,  for  its  establishment  is  laid 
open.  3.  The  reality  of  the  Supernatural,  of  his  manifestation 
through  nature,  of  his  personality,  and  of  his  personal  intervention 
in  nature — these  are  established  or  reason  itself  is  denied. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


Definition. 

By  the  Supernatural  we  do  not  mean  the  spiritual.  Yet 
this  has  been  and  is  a  common  conception  of  it.  The  distinc- 
tion between  the  Supernatural  and  the  Natural  is  held  to  be 
the  distinction  between  moral  freedom  and  physical  necessity, 
between  spirit  and  matter.  Such  thinkers  embrace  within  the 
Supernatural  not  only  God,  but  angels  and  men.  That  is, 
all  that  is  truly  spiritual  and  so,  because  self-initiating,  able 
to  modify  and  even  to  break  through  the  necessary  succession 
of  physical  causes  and  effects  they  call  supernatural.  Thus 
Bushnell^  defines  the  Supernatural  as  *'  Whatever  it  be  that  is, 
either  not  in  the  chain  of  material  cause  and  effect,  or  which 
acts  on  the  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  in  nature,  from  without 
the  chain."  So  Hickok  when  discussing  the  "  Valid  Being  of 
the  Soul,"  says^,  "  The  facts  of  a  comprehending. — not 
merely  conjoining,  nor  connecting — power  over  nature, 
and  of  an  ethical  experience,  prove  the  soul  to  be  supernatural." 
Thus,  and  in  this  representing  many  living  and  influential  au- 
thors, William  Adams  Brown  writes^,  "  The  insight  that  law 
is  universal  is  matched  by  the  higher  insight  that  it  is  only  in 
consciousness  that  we  find  law.  Thus,  the  supernatural  re- 
ceives its  true  meaning  of  the  personal,  and  the  false  anti- 
thesis between  nature  and  the  supernatural  is  removed.  The 
supernatural  is  the  natural  seen  in  its  spiritual  significance." 
So,  too,  he  says*,  "  This  sharp  division  between  nature  and  the 
supernatural  science  no  longer  recognizes.     It  knows  but  one 

^Nature  and  the  Supernatural,  p.  37. 

"  Rational  Psychology,  pp.  540,  541. 

^  Christian  Theology  in  Outline,  p.  229. 

""  Methodist  Review  Quarterly,  Jan.,  191 1,  p.  40. 


,40  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

world,  both  natural  and  supernatural,  or,  as  we  express  it  in 
the  more  familiar  terms,  both  material  and  spiritual." 

This  way  of  thinking  is,  however,  misleading,  inad- 
equate and  untrue.  It  is  misleading  in  that  it  assumes  what 
is  yet  to  be  proved.  As  Henry  B.  Smith  wrote,'^  '*  The  im- 
plication or  tacit  assertion  that  the  Supernatural  and  the  spirit- 
ual are  identical. — that  all  which  is  truly  spiritual  is  also  super- 
natural, is  the  unproved  and  disputable  position."  It  is  a  ques- 
tion, and  a  vital  one,  whether  God  and  man  are  essentially  the 
same.  It  is  the  question  which  divides  the  Old  Theology  from 
what  is  called  the  "  New  Theology."  This  definition,  there- 
fore, hides  the  issue.  To  accept  it  as  a  guide  in  controversy 
would  blind  us  to  the  chief  contention.  Again,  this  mode  of 
thinking  is  inadequate  in  that  it  does  not  reach  to  the  heart  of 
the  question.  This  is  not  whether  there  is  a  kind  of  being 
above  physical  nature  and  so  superior  to  the  chain  of  necessary 
causes.  There  are  many  who  deny  even  this;  but  there  are 
many,  too,  who,  while  they  admit  both  the  reality  and  the  trans- 
cendence of  spirit  as  spirit,  take,  as  we  have  seen,  the  ground 
that  the  human  spirit  and  the  Divine  Spirit  are  essentially  one. 
That  is,  the  question  is  not  whether  man  is  above  nature ;  it  is 
whether  there  is  anything  above  man.  If  there  is  not,  then  no 
argument  is  advanced  by  defining  the  Supernatural  as  the  spir- 
itual ;  if  there  is,  then  the  definition  contains  no  reply.  Hence, 
it  is  inadequate.  To  get  any  where,  we  must  ask,  not  is  there 
being  which  is  supernatural  in  the  sense  of  spiritual,  but  is 
there  being  which  is  supernatural  in  the  sense  of  absolute,  that 
is,  independent  and  self -existent  because  uncaused.  Once  more, 
the  definition  under  consideration  is  untrue.  It  assumes,  even 
when  it  does  not  assert,  that  human  freedom  and  divine  free- 
dom are  one  and  the  same  inasmuch  as  both  are  superior  to 
physical  or  necessary  causation.  This  is  the  reason  why  both 
should  be  classed  as  supernatural.  The  truth,  however,  is  that, 
though  both  are  alike  with  respect  to  this  superiority,  yet  in 
another  and  more  important  respect  they  are  radically  unlike. 
The  law  of  cause  and  effect,  while  it  differs,  does  not  break 
down  when  applied  to  the  human  will.     As  H.   B.   Smith 

'Apologetics,  p.  21. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  141 

says,^  "If  it  did,  then  there  would  be  pure  contingence 
and  the  element  of  no  law  pervading  the  system."  Physical 
and  human  nature,  therefore,  are  alike  in  the  most  comprehen- 
sive and  significant  respect.  They  are  both  of  them,  though 
differently,  yet  really,  caused  and  determined.  They  both  of 
them  presuppose  a  creator  and  reveal  a  preserver  and  gov- 
ernor. They  are  not,  like  that  creator,  preserver  and  governor, 
uncaused,  self-subsistent  and  autonomous.  This  is  the  dis- 
tinction in  comparison  with  which  all  other  distinctions  are  as 
nothing,  and  it  is  to  this  distinction  that  the  definition  of  the 
Supernatural  as  the  spiritual  is  untrue. 

Again,  by  the  Supernatural  we  do  not  mean  being  that, 
though  uncaused,  self-subsistent  and  autonomous,  is  plural, 
that  is,  made  up  of  many  such  distinct  and  independent  beings. 
Such  a  conception  is  on  its  face  a  contradiction.  To  go  no 
further,  what  is  autonomous  must  be  single.  Absolute  sover- 
eignty and  a  plurality  of  even  federated  gods  are  inconsistent. 

By  the  Supernatural,  then,  we  do  mean,  being  that  is  above 
the  sequence  of  all  nature  whether  physical  or  spiritual;  sub- 
stance that  is  not  caused,  and  that  is  not  determined  whether 
physically  and  necessarily  as  in  the  case  of  physical  nature  or 
rationally  and  freely  as  in  the  case  of  spiritual  nature;  in  a 
word,  unique  reality  the  essence  of  whose  uniqueness  is  that  the 
reality  is  uncaused,  self-subsistent  and  autonomous.  We  call 
this  Supernatural  the  Infinite  to  denote  the  absence  of  limita- 
tion. We  call  it  also  the  Absolute  to  express  perfect  indepen- 
dence both  in  being  and  action.  We  call  it,  too,  the  Uncondi- 
tioned to  emphasize  freedom  from  every  necessary  relation.  In 
short,  we  apply  all  three  terms  to  it  to  affirm  the  absence  of  ev- 
ery restriction.  Such  is  the  Supernatural  that  we  are  about  to 
consider.  Does  it  exist?  Does  it  manifest  itself?  What  is  its 
nature?  If  a  person,  can  he  reveal  himself  immediately  as 
such?  These  are  the  inquiries  which  we  shall  raise.  And  the 
radical  distinctness  of  the  Supernatural  from  the  natural,  whe- 
ther physical  or  spiritual;  and  the  singleness  of  the  Super- 
natural,— these  are  the  two  positions  which  our  definition  as 
it  has  been  unfolded  will  call  on  us  to  guard  most  carefully. 

^Apologetics,  p.  22. 


,42  THE  SUPERNATURAL 


II. 
Importance  of  the  Inquiry. 

Though  as  abstract  and  difficult  as  any,  it  is  more  important, 
because  more  fundamental,  than  all.  This  may  be  seen  in 
the  various  departments  of  thought  and  life. 

It  is  self -evidently  so  in  Christian  Apologetics.  The 
subject-matter  of  this  science  is  the  proof,  not  of  the  su- 
periority nor  even  of  the  uniqueness,  but  of  the  supernatural- 
ness  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  aim  of  apologetics  is  to 
show  that  Christianity  is  supernatural  and,  therefore,  superior 
to  and  unique  among  the  religions  of  the  world.  Thus  Christ  is 
to  be  presented  as  the  Saviour  of  men,  not  because  he  grew  up 
out  of  the  natural,  but  because  he  came  down  from  the  Super- 
natural. It  is  this  that  makes  him,  and  it  is  only  this  that 
could  make  him,  our  almighty  Redeemer.  That  is,  apologetics 
presupposes  the  Supernatural.  It  would  be  as  absurd  were  the 
the  latter  not  real  as  would  be  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  one 
in  Europe  to  prove  that  he  was  a  citizen  of  the  United  States 
if  there  were  no  United  States.  Apologetics,  therefore,  cannot 
ignore  our  inquiry.  Strictly  speaking,  it  must  begin  with  it. 
The  first  and  the  most  necessary  work  of  Fundamental  Apol- 
ogetics is  to  vindicate  the  Supernatural  as  a  distinct  and  a 
single  being. 

Similar  is  its  place  in  Christian  dogmatics.  Deny  the  Super- 
natural and  the  very  substance  of  this  science  is  evaporated. 
What  it  discusses  is  the  Supernatural  and  the  relation  between 
it  and  the  natural.  Its  chief  topics  are  God,  creation  and 
providence,  redemption,  revelation  and  salvation:  and  God 
is  the  supernatural  fact;  creation  and  providence  are  su- 
pernatural acts;  redemption  involves  a  supernatural  covenant, 
a  supernatural  gift  and  a  supernatural  sacrifice  and  victory; 
revelation  is  a  supernatural  communication  of  supernatural 
information;  and  salvation  is  the  work  of  the  Supernatural 
and  issues  in  a  supernatural  transformation.  Without  the 
reality  of  the  Supernatural,  therefore,  dogmatics  would  be 
as  meaningless  as  astronomy  would  be  if  the  stars  were  but 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  143 

spectres.  Its  subject-matter  is  the  uncaused,  the  self-subsis- 
tent,  the  autonomous. 

The  case  is  much  the  same  in  philosophy.  It  must  postulate, 
if  it  does  not  prove,  the  Supernatural.  It  fails  ro  explain  the 
reality  in  nature,  if  it  denies  or  ignores  the  unique  reality 
that  is  above  nature.  Thus  positivism,  in  that  it  declines  to  go 
behind  or  beyond  phenomena,  ceases  to  be  a  false  philosophy. 
It  has  no  conception,  not  even  a  wrong  one,  of  the  aim  of 
philosophy.  Any  explanation  to  be  adequate  must  be  ultimate, 
and  no  explanation  can  be  ultimate  till  it  rests  on  the  un- 
caused, the  self-subsistent  and  the  autonomous. 

It  is  so  with  science.  This  would  observe,  compare  and 
classify  phenomena.  It  would  confine  itself  to  giving  an  ac- 
count of  the  outside  of  things.  To  do  this,  however,  presup- 
poses inquiry  as  to  their  inside.  What  a  thing  appears  to  be 
can  be  seen  truly  only  in  the  light  of  what  it  is.  To  interpret 
the  actions  of  a  man,  you  must  remember  that  he  is  not  a 
stone  nor  even  a  dog.  You  will  not  see  all  that  is  to  be  seen 
in  what  he  does,  unless  you  regard  it  as  the  expression  of  a 
free  self-conscious  spirit.  Precisely  so,  if  science  ignores  what 
is  above  and  behind  nature,  it  fails  to  discern  rightly  and  cer- 
tainly to  estimate  justly  what  is  in  nature.  The  caused,  the 
dependent,  the  determined  must  be  read  as  a  manifestation  of 
the  uncaused,  the  self-subsistent,  the  autonomous,  the  universe 
in  its  relation  to  its  unique  Creator,  if  it  is  to  be  understood 
or  even  if  it  is  to  be  read  as  it  really  appears.  Science's  own 
development  is  establishing  this  most  significant  fact.  "  We 
can  not  overlook  ",  says  Lindsay,'''  "  how  truly  Spencerianism 
has  been  tending  to  prove  that  no  progress  of  science  shall  be 
able  to  dispense  with  supersensible  Reality,  or  to  displace  meta- 
physical intuition  or  belief ;"  and  the  fourteen  years  that  have 
passed  since  the  utterance  of  this  judgment  have  only  confirmed 
it. 

Even  more  evidently  is  the  Supernatural  indispensable  to 
morality.  This  presupposes  a  law  above  nature  as  well  as 
objective  to  self.  Its  characteristic  and  unique  sense  of  obli- 
gation can  not  be  explained  otherwise.     This  is  not  satisfied, 

^  Recent  Advances  in  Theistic  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  74. 


144  "^"^  SUPERNATURAL 

if  regarded  merely  as  expressing  the  demand  of  the  constitu- 
tion of  things.  The  force  even  of  the  latter  points  to  an  au- 
thority above  itself.  Nature,  spiritual  no  less  than  physical, 
is  bound  by  the  law  of  nature  because  this  law  has  both  its 
origin  and  sanction  in  that  which  is  above  nature.  This  is 
being  appreciated  as  never  before.  As  Lindsay  says  again,^ 
**  The  moral  problem  is  now  more  clearly  seen  to  have  its 
ultimate  ground  or  metaphysical  basis  in  the  Absolute."  Doubt- 
less, a  morality  may  be  developed  independently  of  this  re- 
ligious basis.  It  must,  however,  lack  permanence  as  reared 
on  a  superficial  foundation.  It  must  also  lack  completeness; 
for®  "  the  ideal  law  revealed  in  conscience  is  fully  realized  only 
as  religion  possesses  the  soul."  This  law  must  be  the  transcript 
of  the  nature  and  the  revelation  of  the  will  of  the  being  who 
is  uncaused,  self-subsistent,  autonomous,  that  is,  who  is  infinite 
and  absolute  and  so  unique  in  his  holiness.  In  the  sphere  of 
moral  law  nothing  short  of  this  could  be  ideal.  Fairly  and 
fully  interpreted,  conscience  itself  affirms  as  much  as  this. 

In  view  of  all  this,  it  should  go  without  saying  that  religion 
and  civilization  and  so  human  achievement  depend  directly  on 
the  conviction  of  the  Supernatural.  It  is  the  heroes  of  faith 
who,  as  a  rule,  have  been  the  men  of  action.  In  comparison 
with  them  what  has  been  accomplished  by  the  champions  of 
unbelief?  This  is  yet  more  evident  in  the  case  of  the  na- 
tion. Let  a  people,  as  the  Anglo-Saxons,  base  their  in- 
stitutions on  faith  in  the  living  God,  and  they  move  to 
the  front  and  stay  there.  Let  a  race,  as  the  Chinese,  sub- 
stitute agnosticism  for  religion,  and  they  drop  to  the  rear 
and  keep  there.  Thus  apologetics,  dogmatics,  philosophy, 
science,  morality,  religion,  individual  progress,  civilization  in 
general,  presuppose  and  even  demand  the  Supernatural.  Of 
all  truths  the  most  metaphysical,  no  other  is  so  intensely  prac- 
tical.   Its  atmosphere  is  necessary  to  life. 

Beyond  this,  it  should  be  observed  that  by  its  own  claim  the 
Christian  religion  must  stand  or  fall  with  the  reality  of  the 
Supernatural.  Unless  our  religion  express  the  intervention  in 
nature,  both  physical  and  spiritual,  of  what  is  essentially  un- 

'  Ibid.,  p.  62.  •  Ibid.,  p.  62. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  145 

caused,  self-subsistent  and  autonomous  and,  as  and  because 
such,  both  radically  distinct  from  the  world  and  itself  single, 
it  is  of  all  frauds  the  most  unblushing  and  stupendous.  It 
presents  itself  to  us,  not  as  an  evolution  of  the  divine  in  nature, 
but  as  a  direct  revelation  of  and  from  God,  who,  though  in 
nature,  was  alone  before  it  and  is  also  distinct  from  it  and 
alone  above  it.  Thus  the  new  life  that  is  characteristic  of  its 
confessors  it  declares  to  be  the  result  of  a  new  birth,  a  birth 
from  above,  a  birth  by  the  spirit  of  God  (Jno.  iii.  3),  and  to 
be  throughout  a  manifestation  of  his  unique  power  (Gal.  ii. 
20).  The  doctrine  that  it  teaches  it  affirms  to  be  "the  wis- 
dom of  God  "  (i  Cor.  i.  24)  ;  and,  so  far  from  admitting  that 
it  may  be  known  from  nature,  which  does  clearly  reveal  his 
everlasting  power  and  divinity,  it  insists  that  it  was  "  kept 
secret  from  the  foundation  of  the  world  "  (Mt.  xiii.  35).  The 
corner  stone  on  which  it  rests,  even  the  fact  of  Christ,  it 
declares  to  be  both  "  the  power  of  God  and  the  wisdom  of 
God  "  ( I  Cor.  i.  24)  :  and  it  accounts  for  his  person,  by  affirm- 
ing that  the  eternal  *'  Word  was  made  flesh  "  (Jno.  i.  14)  ;  for 
his  death,  by  teaching  that  God  gave  him  (Jno.  iii.  16)  to  be 
"  a  ransom  for  many  "  (Mt.  xx.  28)  ;  for  his  resurrection,  by 
ascribing  it  directly  and  solely  to  *'  the  working  of  the  strength 
of  the  might  of  God  himself  "  (Eph.  i.  19,  20)  ;  and  for  the 
power  manifest  in  the  church  and  in  its  members,  by  referring 
it  to  the  Holy  Spirit  as  given  by  the  exalted  Christ  and  from 
the  throne  of  God  (Eph.  iv.  7-13).  In  short,  Christianity  in- 
sists on  nothing  so  strongly  as  on  this,  that  it  is  not  of  this 
world  and  so  natural,  but  is  directly  of  the  sole  because  absolute 
God  and  thus  supernatural.  This  is  the  message  of  its 
Scriptures.  Unless,  therefore,  its  supernaturalness  can  be  vin- 
dicated, it  is  discredited,  and  that,  too,  out  of  its  own  mouth. 
Nor  may  we  fail  to  observe  that  it  is  just  this  supernatural- 
ness of  Christianity  which  makes  it  the  hope  of  the  world.  It 
is  the  "  good  tidings  of  great  joy  which  shall  be  to  all  people  " 
because  it  is  the  way  of  salvation  from  the  guilt  and  from  the 
power  of  sin.  It  could  not  be  this,  however,  were  it  not  super- 
natural. The  condemned  criminal  cannot  justify  himself. 
Another,  and  one  not  like  himself  under  the  curse  of  the 


\ 


146  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

law,  must  bear  his  penalty.  The  diseased  man  can  not 
cure  himself.  Another,  and  one  not  dying  from  his  dis- 
ease, must  give  to  him  of  his  blood  and  so  of  his  life. 
Precisely  thus,  guilty  human  nature  demands  a  supernatural 
redeemer,  and  corrupt  human  nature  demands  a  supernatural 
regenerator  and  sanctifier;  and  under  a  moral  government 
neither  may  come  forward  until  authorized  to  do  so  by  the 
absolute  and  so  sole  ruler.  Our  salvation  in  a  word  sup- 
poses a  new  start ;  and  the  possibility  of  this,  whether  for  the 
race  or  for  the  individual,  is  conditionecl  on  such  supernat- 
ural intervention.  If,  as  observation  and  experience  no  less 
than  Scripture  testify,  we,  as  individuals  and  as  a  race,  are 
"dead  through  trespasses  and  sins"  (Eph.  ii.  i),  we  can  be 
quickened  and  raised  up  to  heaven  in  the  likeness  of  Christ 
only  as  God  himself  reaches  down  from  heaven  and  himself 
lifts  us  up.  The  natural  evolution  of  a  corpse,  even  though 
nature  be  conceived,  as  we  conceive  it,  as  created  and  sustained 
and  guided  by  God,  can  issue  only  in  increasing  corruption. 
That  is  precisely  the  result  in  which  he  intends  that  nature, 
since  he  has  permitted  it  to  become  corrupt,  should  issue. 
Ours,  therefore,  is  no  ordinary  contention.  Not  only  the 
truth  of  Christianity,  but  the  hope  of  the  world  is  bound  up 
with  the  question  as  to  the  Supernatural;  and  the  question  as 
to  the  Supernatural  concerns  both  his  distinctness  from  the 
natural  and  his  singleness  as  regards  himself. 

III. 

The  Reality  of  the  Supernatural. 

The  question  is  not  whether  the  Infinite  is,  as  many  agnostics 
would  hold,  the  all.  Neither  is  it  whether  the  Absolute  exists 
and  acts  in  entire  isolation  from  the  world.  Nor  yet  is  it 
whether  the  Unconditioned  sustains  no  relation  to  anything. 
No  one  of  these  positions  is  essential  to  the  conception  of  the 
Supernatural.  The  Infinite,  because  it  signifies  unlimited,  need 
not  mean  the  all.  It  may,  at  least  as  well,  mean,  not  that  it  is 
not  limited  in  the  sense  of  being  distinguished  from  other 
things,  but  that  no  limit  is  possible  to  it  as  so  distinguished. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  147 

The  Absolute  need  not  mean  that  which  exists  and  acts  in 
isolation  from  the  natural.  It  may  as  well  mean  that  which  is 
not  dependent  on  the  natural.  The  Unconditioned  need  not 
mean  that  which  sustains  no  relations  to  anything.  It  may  as 
well  mean  that  which  sustains  no  necessary  relations. 

Again,  not  only  is  no  one  of  these  positions  of  the  agnostic 
essential  to  the  conception  of  the  Supernatural;  no  one  of 
them  is  possible  logically.  The  moral  infinite  can  not  be  less 
than  perfect.  Hence,  it  can  not  be  the  all ;  for  the  all,  to  be  the 
all,  must  be  the  sum  of  good  and  evil.  The  phenomenal  uni- 
verse demands  the  Absolute  as  its  ground;  but  just  because  it 
is  its  ground,  the  Absolute,  as  regards  some  of  its  activity,  can- 
not be  existing  in  isolation  from  it.  The  order  of  the  world 
implies  an  unconditioned  governor;  but  if  he  be  the  governor 
of  the  world,  the  Unconditioned  must  have  come  into  relation 
to  it. 

All  this  is  confirmed  by  consciousness.  Its  clearest  and 
strongest  testimony,  a  testimony  that  must  be  accepted  if  we 
are  to  be  justified  in  thinking,  is  to  our  individuality.  That 
is,  consciousness  insists  that  the  infinite  does  not  embrace  us 
and  so  that  it  is  not  the  all.  In  a  word,  not  only  need  not  the 
Supernatural,  if  it  be,  be  such  as  has  been  indicated;  but  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  it  could  not  be  such,  even  if  consciousness 
did  not  testify  that  it  is  not  such. 

The  question,  then,  is,  whether  there  is  a  being  who,  though 
he  embraces  nothing  but  himself,  is  in  himself  boundless ;  whe- 
ther there  is  a  being  who,  though  now  he  exists  in  connection 
with  nature  and  ordinarily  acts  through  it,  is  in  both  his  being 
and  his  action  independent  of  it ;  whether  there  is  a  being  who, 
though  he  is  related  to  the  universe  as  its  creator  and  preserver 
and  governor  and  redeemer,  stands,  so  far  as  he  himself  is  con- 
cerned, in  no  necessary  relation  to  it — in  short,  whether  there 
is  a  being  who  is  supernatural  in  the  sense  that,  though  he  has 
chosen  to  come  into  the  closest  relations  to  nature,  he  was  be- 
fore it  and  is  above  it  and  is  unrestricted  by  it,  being  himself 
uncaused,  self-subsistent,  autonomous,  and  so  distinct  and 
single. 

The  reality  of  such  a  being  is  indicated  by  the  untenableness 


148  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

of  the  opposing  hypotheses.  These  are  three:  Positivism, 
Monism,  PluraHsm. 

I.  Positivism. — This  is  a  negative  and  epistemological  hy- 
pothesis rather  than  an  affirmative  and  ontological  one.  It 
tries  to  explain  why  we  cannot  know  and  so  should  not  believe 
in  the  Supernatural;  it  does  not  essay  to  provide  a  substitute 
for  the  Supernatural.  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  its  negative 
character,  it  is  prevalent  enough,  and  it  is  important  enough, 
both  in  itself  and  because  of  the  degree  to  which  monism  in- 
corporates and  uses  it,  to  demand  separate  statement  and  dis- 
cussion. 

By  Positivism,  then,  we  understand  the  doctrine  that  we  can 
know  phenomena  and  the  laws  by  which  they  are  connected, 
but  nothing  more.  The  reason  assigned  for  this  is  that  we  have 
no  knowledge  prior  to  experience  and  all  our  knowledge  is 
by  induction  from  sensations.  That  is,  the  world  of  knowledge 
is  that  world,  and  only  that  world,  which  is  revealed  to  us  by 
sense-perception  and  so  is  the  subject-matter  of  the  Natural  or 
Positive  Sciences.  Hence,  as  we  cannot  see,  hear,  touch,  taste 
or  smell  the  Supernatural,  it  must  be  incognizable;  and  if  we 
thus  do  not  know  and  can  never  know  that  it  exists,  what  right 
have  we  to  assert  that  it  does  or  to  believe  that  it  does  ?  Such 
is  positivism.  It  denies,  as  must  have  appeared,  both  the  posi- 
tions which,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  incumbent  on  us  to  guard; 
namely,  the  distinctness  of  the  Supernatural  from  the  natural 
and  the  singleness  of  the  Supernatural. 

The  theory  of  knowledge,  however,  on  which  it  rests  and 
in  which  it  essentially  consists  is  untrue.  We  have  knowledge 
prior  to  experience  and  all  our  knowledge  is  not  by  induction 
from  sensations. 

The  most  extreme  advocates  of  positivism  virtually  admit 
this.  Thus  Comte,  at  once  the  boldest  and  the  most  consistent 
of  them,  himself  the  father  of  positivism,  says  :*^  "  If,  on  the 
one  side,  every  positive  theory  must  be  necessarily  founded  on 
observation,  it  is,  on  the  other  side,  equally  plain  that  to  apply 
itself  to  the  task  of  observation  our  mind  has  need  of  some 
theory.    If  in  contemplating  the  phenomena,  we  do  not  immed- 

^*  La  Phil.  Positive,  chap.  i. 


I 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  149 

iately  attach  them  to  certain  principles,  not  only  would  it  be 
impossible  for  us  to  combine  those  isolated  observations,  so 
as  to  draw  any  fruit  therefrom;  but  we  should  be  entirely  in- 
capable of  retaining  them,  and  in  most  cases  the  facts  would 
remain  before  our  eyes  unnoticed.  The  need  at  all  times  of 
some  theory  whereby  to  associate  facts,  combined  with  the  evi- 
dent impossibility  of  the  human  mind's  forming,  at  its  origin, 
theories  out  of  observations,  is  a  fact  which  it  is  impossible  to 
ignore."  What  is  this  but  an  admission  that,  in  order  to  ex- 
periential knowledge,  there  must  be  a  priori  knowledge;  a 
theory  in  the  mind,  if  there  is  to  be  an  induction  from  facts 
outside  of  the  mind?  Of  course,  Comte  does  not  mean  this. 
His  explanation  is  that  the  mind  invents  its  theory,  and  then, 
when  it  has  made  its  observations  with  its  aid,  rejects  it. 
Even  this,  however,  allows  that  the  mind  must  have  a  theory 
in  order  to  observe  and  that  it  can  itself  form  a  theory  prior  to 
observation. 

The  necessity  of  these  admissions  appears  in  the  nature  of 
induction.  It  proceeds  in  every  case  on  the  basis  of  an  a 
priori  truth;  namely,  that  the  same  causes  under  the  same 
circumstances  produce  the  same  effects.  For  example,  you 
conclude  that  ice  will  melt,  should  the  temperature  rise  to  32° 
F.,  because  all  observation  has  shown  such  to  be  the  case. 
But  why  should  you  so  believe  ?  From  the  mere  fact  that  one 
phenomenon  always  has  followed  another  it  may  not  be  in- 
ferred that  it  always  will.  If  such  a  conclusion  may  be  drawn, 
it  is  only  because  there  is  more  in  its  premises  than  the  observed 
sequence.  It  must  be  because  we  know  that  there  is  power  in 
the  antecedent,  the  temperature  of  32°,  to  effect  the  conse- 
quent, the  melting  of  the  ice;  and  also  because  we  know  that, 
the  power  and  the  conditions  of  its  exercise  continuing  the 
same,  the  consequent  will  be  the  same.  These,  however,  are  a 
priori  truths.  They  are  not  in  any  way  the  results  of  observa- 
tion or  of  sensation.  All  that  is  given  thus  is  the  mere  sequence 
of  the  phenomena,  the  rising  of  the  temperature  to  32°  and  the 
ice  beginning  then  to  melt.  This  the  positivists  maintain  as 
strenuously  as  any.  This  is  all  the  explanation  that  they  offer 
of  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect.     They  reduce  it  to  a  se- 


Ijo  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

quence.  Yet  if  they  are  to  generalize  with  confidence  from 
these  sequences,  they  must  admit  the  a  priori  truths  that  a 
cause  is  such  because  it  has  the  power  to  produce  its  effect  and 
that  the  same  cause  under  the  same  circumstances  must  pro- 
duce the  same  effect.  And  so  it  is  that  Comte  speaks  of  the 
mind  as  obhged  to  invent  a  theory  before  it  can  observe  pro- 
fitably. Is  it  not  more  rational  to  believe  that  it  finds  itself 
furnished  in  advance  with  the  true  theory?  Indeed,  it  is 
contradictory  to  speak  of  inventing  something  the  elements  of 
which  are  neither  discovered  without  nor  discerned  within. 

Moreover,  in  sensation  itself  there  is  given  more  than 
mere  sensation.  As  H.  B.  Smith  wrote,^^  ''  There  is  a 
material  impact,  and  also  a  feeling  of  resistance,  not  material, 
but  conscious — a  resisting  self,  a  person,  an  Ego — involved 
(whether  or  not  this  is  given  in  the  sensation  itself  is  not 
material,  it  is  certainly  implied).  And  this  conscious  knowl- 
edge cannot  be  derived  from  the  external  phenomena,  but  is  a 
distinguishable  state  of  the  ego.  The  ego  cannot  be  derived 
from  the  non-ego."  Even  J.  S.  Mill  confesses^^  that  a  series 
of  sensations  aware  of  itself  is  "  the  final  inexplicability  ". 
Positivism  can  describe  the  successive  sensations,  but  that  some- 
thing whereby  we  know  them  as  ours  cannot  come  out  of 
them.  How  can  a  mere  sequence  of  feelings  of  pain  generate 
the  consciousness  that  it  is  I  who  feel  the  pain  ?  Must  there  not 
be  already  the  consciousness  of  self  in  order  to  the  identifica- 
tion of  the  pain  as  my  pain?  I  must  recognize  the  particular 
peg  as  mine,  if  I  am  to  hang  my  hat  on  my  own  peg.  Admit 
that  the  sensation  of  pain  may  be  the  occasion  of  sel  f -conscious- 
ness and  even  its  necessary  occasion,  still,  can  it  be  its  cause? 
A  tree  is  the  occasion  of  my  seeing  a  tree.  If  no  tree  were  pre- 
sented to  me,  I  should  not  see  one.  Yet  who  may  say  that  the 
tree  by  itself  produces  the  vision  of  a  tree;  or,  if  we  speak 
strictly,  that  it  produces  it  at  all?  What  the  tree  does  is  to 
call  the  faculty  of  vision  into  exercise  by  furnishing  it  an 
appropriate  object,  and  thus  to  show  that  the  faculty  in  ques- 
tion existed  prior  to  the  presentation  of  the  tree.     It  is  the 

^Apologetics,  p.  53. 

"^Ex.  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Phil.,  Vol.  i,  p.  262. 


i 


} 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  151 

faculty  of  vision  that  produces  the  vision.  Necessary  though 
the  tree  is  as  an  occasion,  it  is  only  an  occasion.  In  like  manner 
sensation  is  the  occasion  of  self-consciousness.  You  may  even 
argue  that  it  is  only  in  sensation  that  we  become  conscious 
of  self.  Yet  who  may  maintain  that  sensation  gives  of  itself 
the  consciousness  of  self?  All  that  it  does  is  to  call  self-con- 
sciousness into  exercise  and  so  to  reveal  the  self  as  existing 
prior  to  sensation  and  thus  as  independent  of  it.  When  Leib- 
nitz was  told  that  the  gist  of  Locke's  philosophy  was,  "  Nihil 
est  in  intellectu  quod  non  prius  fuerit  in  sensu,"  he  replied, 
"  Etiam,  nisi  intellectus  ipse."^^  Indeed,  the  intellect  mani- 
fests itself  in  sense ;  a  priori  elements  appear  even  in  sensation 
itself. 

Beyond  this,  if  there  be  no  knowledge  except  as  the  result  of 
induction  from  individual  sensations,  we  are  involved  by  the 
very  process  of  so-called  knowledge  in  utter  ignorance  even 
of  what  we  claim  to  know.  The  position  is,  that  we  know 
only  what  we  can  observe;  that  this  is  the  mere  sequence 
of  phenomena,  phenomena  as  antecedents  and  consequents; 
and  that  we  know  the  consequents  only  as  modes  or  forms  of 
the  antecedents.  In  a  word,  scientific  knowledge  is  simply  the 
knowledge  of  these  differing  modes.  Suppose,  then,  that  we 
trace  back  to  the  utmost  point  within  our  reach  the  last  in- 
spected consequents.  These  can  be  known  "  only  as  we  know 
the  antecedents,"  only  as  "modes  of  the  antecedents."  Then 
they  cannot  be  known  at  all ;  for  by  the  supposition,  we  cannot 
reach  their  antecedents,  having'  already  gone  back  as  far  as 
we  can.  Thus  the  whole  process  of  knowing  breaks  down. 
As  we  do  not  know  the  ultimate  antecedent,  all  our  boasted 
knowledge  becomes  a  chain  of  total  ignorance.  "  It  is  a 
chain  which  ",  as  H.  B.  Smith  wrote, ^*  "  is  all  hanging  and 
nowhere  hangs."  What  is  beyond  sense  being  absolutely  un- 
known, we  cannot  know  even  what  appears  to  sense.  Hence, 
the  positivist,  to  be  consistent,  ought  to  be  agnostic  as  to  every 
thing.  If  all  that  he  can  know  be  consequents  of  phenomena, 
he  cannot  know  even  this.  Thus  the  denial  of  the  Supernatural 
is  the  denial  of  the  natural  also.     In  a  word,  the  refutation  of 

^^  Nouv.  Ess.  II,  I,  2.  ^*'  Apologetics,  p.  55. 


152  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

positivism  is  that  it  is  a  theory  of  knowledge  which  is  destruc- 
tive of  all  knowledge.  Of  course,  this  refutation  does  not 
prove  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural.  It  does,  however,  dis- 
pose of  the  objection  that  because  the  Supernatural  cannot  be 
known  by  sensation  it  cannot  be  known  at  all.  Such  a  theory 
of  knowledge  is  contradictory  and  so  must  be  untrue. 

2.  Monism. — This  hypothesis,  unlike  that  just  considered,  is 
affirmative  and  ontological.  It  offers  a  substitute  for  the 
Supernatural  as^  we  have  described  it.  It  does  this  by  denying 
the  first  of  the  two  positions  which,  as  we  have  seen,  must  be 
guarded.  That  is,  it  ignores  the  distinction  between  the  Super- 
natural and  the  natural:  while  either  is  to  be  conceived  as 
single,  this  is  so  because  they  are  both  one  and  the  same.  This 
hypothesis  itself  assumes  two  forms  according  as  the  one  abso- 
lute reality  is  regarded  as  essentially  matter  or  spirit.  In  the 
one  case  we  have  Materialistic  Monism ;  in  the  other.  Idealistic 
Monism. 

a.  Materialistic  Monism. — Of  this  Professor  Ernst  Haeckel 
is  probably  the  representative  exponent.  "  By  Monism  ",  he 
says,  "  we  unambiguously  express  our  conviction  that  there 
lives  '  one  spirit  in  all  things ',  and  that  the  whole  cognizable 
world  is  constituted,  and  has  been  developed,  in  accordance 
with  one  common  fundamental  law.  We  emphasize  by  it,  in 
particular,  the  essential  unity  of  inorganic  and  organic  na- 
ture, the  latter  having  been  evolved  from  the  former  only  at  a 
relatively  late  period.  We  cannot  draw  a  sharp  line  of  dis- 
tinction between  these  two  great  divisions  of  nature,  any  more 
than  we  can  recognize  an  absolute  distinction  between  the  ani- 
mal and  the  vegetable  kingdom,  or  between  the  lower  animals 
and  man.  Similarly,  we  regard  the  whole  of  human  knowledge 
as  a  structural  unity;  in  this  sphere  we  refuse  to  accept  the 
distinction  usually  drawn  between  the  natural  and  the  spiritual. 
The  latter  is  only  a  part  of  the  former  (or  vice  versa) ;  both 
are  one.  Our  monistic  view  of  the  world  belongs,  therefore, 
to  that  group  of  philosophical  systems  which  from  other  points 
of  view  have  been  designated  also  as  mechanical  or  pantheistic. 
However  differently  expressed  in  the  philosophical  systems  of 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  153 

an  Empedocles  or  a  Lucretius,  a  Spinoza  or  a  Giordano  Bruno, 
a  Lamarck  or  a  David  Strauss,  the  fundamental  thought  com- 
mon to  them  all  is  ever  that  of  the  oneness  of  the  cosmos,  of 
the  indissoluble  connection  between  energy  and  matter,  between 
mind  and  embodiment — or,  as  we  may  also  say,  between  God 
and  the  world' — to  which  Goethe,  Germany's  greatest  poet  and 
thinker,  has  given  poetical  expression  in  his  Faust  and  in  the 
wonderful  series  of  poems  entitled  Gott  und  Welt."  ^^  This 
"  confession  of  faith  of  a  man  of  science,"  as  Haeckel  calls  it, 
contains  at  least  the  following  articles : 

1.  The  universe  or  God,  or,  if  you  prefer,  God  or  the  uni- 
verse, is  infinite ;  for  God  "  is  the  infinite  sum  of  all  natural 
forces,  the  sum  of  all  atomic  forces  and  all  ether-vibrations."^^ 

2.  In  the  infinite  God  or  the  infinite  universe  there  are  no 
real  distinctions.  The  organic  is  essentially  one  with  the  in- 
organic; the  animal  is  essentially  one  with  the  vegetable;  man 
is  essentially  one  with  the  animal;  God  is  essentially  one  with 
the  world;  in  a  word,  the  Supernatural  is  essentially  one  with 
the  natural. 

3.  This  supernatural  or  natural  God  or  universe  is  to  be  un- 
derstood in  terms  of  matter.  That  is,  Haeckel's  monism  is 
materialistic  monism.  This  is  what  he  affirms.  "  Even  clearer 
does  it  become  that  all  the  wonderful  phenomena  of  nature 
around  us,  organic  as  well  as  inorganic,  are  only  products  of 
one  and  the  same  original  form,  various  combinations  of  one 
and  the  same  primitive  matter."^^  True,  he  would  regard 
mind  as  well  as  matter  as  an  aspect  of  what  is  most  primitive 
and  fundamental  of  all ;  namely,  ''  substance  " :  but  that  he 
would  conceive  of  substance  and  so  of  mind  mechanically 
rather  than  spiritually — this,  too,  is  clear.  Indeed,  he  says. 
Monism  "  strives  to  carry  back  all  phenomena,  without  excep- 
tion, to  the  mechanism  of  the  atom."  ^^  In  a  word,  materialistic 
monism  starts  with  "  animated  atoms  " ;  it  would  develop  in- 
telligent atoms ;  and  it  makes  the  Supernatural  just  "  the  infi- 
nite sum  "  of  these  atoms. 

^^ Monism,  pp.  3,  4,  5.  "Ibid,  p.  16. 

'Uhid.,  p.  78.  ^'Ibid.,  p.  19. 


154 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


This  hypothesis  is  invalid  in  at  least  the  following  three  re- 
spects : 

I.  It  begs  the  question.  It  starts  with  the  life  and  con- 
sciousness and  mind  which  are  the  very  things  to  be  explained. 
That  is,  it  assumes  what  is  to  be  proved.  Thus  Haeckel  says : 
"  The  two  fundamental  forms  of  substance,  ponderable  matter 
and  ether,  are  not  dead  and  only  moved  by  extrinsic  force,  but 
they  are  endowed  with  sensation  and  will  (though  naturally 
of  the  lowest  grade)  ;  they  experience  an  inclination  for  con- 
densation, a  disHke  of  strain;  they  strive  after  the  one  and 
struggle  against  the  other."^^  "  Every  shade  of  inclination 
from  complete  indifference  to  the  fiercest  passion  is  exemplified 
in  the  chemical  relation  of  the  various  elements  towards  each 
other."  ^^  **  On  those  phenomena  we  base  our  conviction  that 
even  the  atom  is  not  without  a  rudimentary  form  of  sensation 
and  will,  or,  as  it  is  better  expressed,  of  feeling  (aesthesis) 
and  inclination  (tropesis) — that  is,  a  universal  '  soul '  of  the 
simplest  character."^^ 

"  Thus,  then,  in  order  to  explain  life  and  mind  and  conscious- 
ness by  means  of  matter,"  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  writes,  comment- 
ing on  this  very  passage,  "  all  that  is  done  is  to  assume  that 
matter  possesses  these  unexplained  attributes." 

"  What  the  full  meaning  of  that  may  be,  whether  there  be 
any  philosophic  justification  for  any  such  idea,  is  a  matter 
on  which  I  will  not  now  express  an  opinion;  but,  at  any  rate, 
as  it  stands,  it  is  not  science,  and  its  formulation  gives  no  sort 
of  conception  of  what  life  and  will  and  consciousness  really 
are. 

"  Even  if  it  were  true,  it  contains  nothing  whatever  in  the 
nature  of  explanation ;  it  recognizes  the  inexplicable,  and  rele- 
gates it  to  the  atoms,  where  it  seems  to  hope  that  further  quest 
may  cease.  Instead  of  tackling  the  difficulty  when  it  actually 
occurs;  instead  of  associating  life,  will,  and  consciousness  with 
the  organisms  in  which  they  are  actually  in  experience  found, 
these  ideas  are  foisted  into  the  atoms  of  matter;  and  then  the 
properties  which  have  been  conferred  on  the  atoms  are  denied 

"  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe,  p.  78. 

"^Ibid.,  p.  79.  ''Ibid.,  p.  80. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  155 

in  all  essential  reality  to  the  fully  developed  organism  which 
those  atoms  help  to  compose !  "  ^^ 

2.  The  hypothesis  under  consideration  does  not  beg  enough. 
Though  it  assumes  what  is  to  be  proved,  it  must  assume  more 
to  complete  its  proof.  Starting  with  "  animated  atoms  "  "  not 
without  a  rudimentary  form  of  sensation  and  will,"  it  develops 
out  of  them  the  inorganic  world;  then,  the  inorganic  world 
into  the  organic ;  then,  the  vegetable  into  the  animal ;  then,  the 
animal  into  man;  then,  man  into  all  that  he  has  become  and 
even  into  all  that  he  will  become.  Not  less  than  this  is  what 
materialistic  monism  undertakes  to  do;  and,  consequently,  it 
is  according  to  its  ability  by  means  of  its  assumption  to  explain 
how  this  can  be  done  that  it  must  stand  or  fall. 

Now  to  do  this,  it  has  "  animated  atoms  "  ''  not  without  a 
rudimentary  form  of  sensation  and  will."  This  is  what  it 
assumes  and  so  is  what  it  may  work  with ;  yet  though  big  and 
utterly  unwarranted  as  an  assumption,  this  is  all  that  it  assumes 
and  so  is  all  that  it  may  work  with.  But  much  more  is  needed. 
If  this  vast  scheme  of  development  is  to  be  explained,  intelli- 
gence, and  not  merely  sensation  and  will,  must  come  in,  and 
must  come  in  at  the  start.  For  feeling  and  inclination  presup- 
pose* and  are  impossible  without  a  condition  or  situation  to  be 
felt  and  to  be  inclined  towards  or  against.  As  Haeckel  says, 
*'  The  two  fundamental  forms  of  substance,  ponderable  matter 
and  ether,  experience  an  inclination  for  condensation,  a  dis- 
like of  strain;  they  strive  after  the  one  and  struggle  against 
the  other."  Nor  is  this  all.  The  result  of  an  evolution  start- 
ing with  and  proceeding  by  means  of  this  striving  and  strug- 
gling must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  depend  on  the  kind  and 
the  degree  of  this  condensation  and  of  this  strain,  and  on  the 
kind  and  degree  of  them  from  the  first  instant  of  attraction 
and  repulsion.  Let  there  have  been  the  smallest  variation  in 
these  then  from  what  there  was,  and  it  would  be  an  entirely 
different  universe  that  we  should  have  now.  How,  then,  came 
it  about  that  the  atomic  feeling  and  inclination  began  to  act 
under  the  one  set  of  conditions  that  could  have  resulted  in  the 
existing  state  of  things?    By  the  law  of  probabilities,  if  it  was 

^  Life  and  Matter,  p.  42. 


156  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

by  chance,  the  chances  were  at  least  practically  infinitely  against 
it.  But  if  not  by  chance,  it  must  have  been  by  design.  That  is^ 
intelligence  must  have  been  not  only  implicit  in  but  actually 
operative  at  the  beginning  of  evolution.  Whence,  however, 
this  intelligence?  The  hypothesis  under  criticism  essays  to 
show  its  development,  but  it  does  not  assume  it  as  already  in 
exercise.  Yet  this  it  must  go  on  and  do,  if  it  is  to  show 
anything  but  its  own  imbecility. 

3.  The  hypothesis  that  we  are  considering,  not  only  begs 
the  question  and  still  does  not  beg  enough,  but  what  it  does 
beg  and  must  beg,  even  to  save  its  face,  is  impossible.  It  as- 
sumes that  "  the  universe,  or  the  cosmos,  is  eternal,  infinite,  and 
illimitable,"  "  Its  substance,  with  its  two  attributes  (matter 
and  energy),  fills  infinite  space,  and  is  in  eternal  motion". 
"  This  motion  runs  on  through  infinite  time  as  an  unbroken 
development,  with  a  periodic  change  from  life  to  death,  from 
evolution  to  devolution."  ^^  That  is,  as  we  have  seen,  it  as- 
sumes that  the  sum  of  all  atomic  forces  and  of  all  ether  vi- 
brations is  infinite  and  in  that  sense  is  God.  This,  moreover, 
must  be  assumed.  As  just  indicated,  there  is  no  other  way  of 
escaping  the  necessity  of  positing  an  infinite  intelligence  dis- 
tinct from  the  universe  and  operative  at  its  origin.  To  do  this,, 
the  cosmos  must  be  regarded  as  itself  "  eternal,  infinite,  and 
illimitable."  Evolution  must  be  the  ultimate  fact;  like  God, 
it  must  have  neither  "beginning  of  days  nor  end  of  years ;  "  it 
must  itself  be  God  himself,  and  so  ultimate  and  thus  beyond 
either  explanation  or  the  need  of  it,  if  that  which  is  determina- 
tive of  it  be  so  rudimentary  and  inadequate  as  mere  atomic 
feeling  and  atomic  inclination.  That  is,  we  can  get  rid  of  the 
Supernatural  only  by  putting  the  natural  in  its  place.  To  do 
this,  however,  is  impossible  on  any  hypothesis,  and  it  would 
seem  to  be  specially  so  on  the  one 'under  review.  For  the 
infinite  substance  which  it  assumes  not  only,  as  we  have  seen, 
"  fills  infinite  space,  but  is  in  eternal  motion."  Now  this  is 
a  contradiction.  There  are  just  two  ways  in  which  an  infinite 
substance  can  be  said  to  fill  infinite  space.    It  can  really  fill  it. 

^  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe,  p.  5. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  157 

That  is,  it  can  form  a  continuum.  This,  however,  as  Derr  has 
pointed  out,  will  mean  "  the  annihilation  of  space."  Indeed, 
there  can  be  no  space,  if  the  ether  of  space  be  absolutely  with- 
out pores  or  vacuities  or  parts;  and  this  is  just  what  a  con- 
tinuum is,  and  what  it  must  be  to  be  a  continuum. "^^  But  "  it 
is  inconceivable  that  motion  should  take  place  in  a  con- 
tinuum." 2^  As  Lucretius  pointed  out  in  his  De  Rerum  Na- 
tura  (II,  95  sqq.),  if  there  were  no  void  spaces  in  the  universe, 
motion  would  be  impossible.  There  would  be  no  space  to  move 
in;  there  would  be  no  parts  to  move.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
ether  does  not  form  a  continuum,  if  it  does  have  pores,  vacui- 
ties and  parts,  if  in  a  word,  there  is  either  space  within  it  for 
its  parts  to  move  in  or,  we  may  add,  space  without  it  for  it  as 
a  whole  to  move  in,  then  the  cosmos  can  not  be  "  eternal,  infi- 
nite and  illimitable."  It  could  be  conceived  to  be  greater  than 
it  is.  It  would  be  greater  than  it  is,  if  its  pores  and  vacuities 
were  filled  and  if  it  itself  filled  the  infinitude  of  space.  That  is, 
from  the  physical  standpoint  the  cosmos  cannot  both  be  con- 
ceived as  "  eternal,  infinite,  and  illimitable  "  and  at  the  same 
time  be  regarded  as  "  in  eternal  motion  "  either  with  respect  to 
its  parts  or  with  respect  to  it  itself  as  a  whole.  The  two  con- 
ceptions are  contradictory  and  so  are  mutually  exclusive.  Of 
course,  it  may  be  replied,  and  it  is  likely  to  be  replied,  to  this 
argumentation  that  it  is  purely  speculative.  This  is  true.  No 
scientist  ever  saw  an  atom  or  felt  the  ether.  They  are  preem- 
inently mental  creations.  We  do  not  cognize  them  by  the 
senses.  As  Ladd  says,  "  It  is  only  because  of  certain 
irresistable  convictions  or  as  symptoms  of  mind  that  we  be- 
lieve in  their  extra-mental  reality."  ^^  Surely,  then,  criticism 
of  inferences  from  these  mental  convictions  and  assumptions 
is  in  order.  Thought-constructions  must  be  tested  by  the  laws 
of  thought.  If  physicists  will  be  metaphysicians,  it  is  by 
metaphysics  that  they  must  be  judged. 

b.  Idealistic  Monism. — In  this,  as  its  name  indicates  and  as 
has  been  pointed  out,  the  one  absolute  reality  is  conceived,  not 

^  The  Uncaused  Being  and  the  Criterion  of  Truth,  p.  72. 
'"Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology,  p.  677. 
'^  The  Uncaused  Being,  p.  73. 


158 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


as  matter  or  substance,  but  as  spirit  or  subject.  The  world 
is  not  composed  of  atoms;  but  it  is  a  system  of  thought  rela- 
tions, and  God  is  just  the  unity  and  the  identity  of  these 
relations.  All  existence,  consequently,  is  regarded  as  a  mani- 
festation of  the  Absolute  and  the  Universal  Intelligence;  and 
the  inherent  power  of  this  ''Absolute  Idea  "  is  conceived  as  the 
sole  agency  at  work  in  all  transformations.  Thus,  whatever  is 
real  is  rational  and  whatever  is  rational  is  real ;  and  the  rational 
and  real  is  neither  more  or  less  than  the  process  of  the  logical 
unfolding  of  the  "Absolute  Idea."  In  a  Word,  if  materialistic 
monism  makes  the  natural  physical  and  puts  it  in  the  place 
of  the  supernatural,  idealistic  monism  makes  the  Supernatural 
an  idea  and  puts  it  in  the  place  of  the  natural.  That  is,  as 
represented  by  the  philosophy  of  Hegel,  in  an  important  sense 
its  source  and  type,  it  identifies  the  Supernatural  and  the  nat- 
ural in  a  universal  syllogism.  That  this  scheme  has  advantages 
over  that  just  considered  should  go  almost  without  saying. 
It  escapes  the  embarrassments  which,  as  we  have  seen,  mater- 
ialistic monism  encounters  from  the  start.  Thus  it  does  not 
have  to  begin  by  begging  animation  and  mind  for  matter ;  for, 
as  Balfour  has  well  said,  ''  it  makes  reason  the  very  essence  of 
all  that  is  or  can  be :  the  immanent  cause  of  the  world-process ; 
its  origin  and  its  goal."  ^^  Again,  it  does  not  have  to  beg  fur- 
ther, in  order  to  the  evolution  of  the  cosmos,  the  active  and 
developed  reason  which  it  is  the  chief  function  of  the  evolution 
to  evolve,  for  logical  movement  is  of  the  essence  of  the  Abso- 
lute Idea.  Once  more,  it  does  not  have  to  solve  the  insoluble 
problem  how  the  physical  universe  can  be  infinite  and  yet 
in  eternal  motion;  for  it  denies  that  there  is  a  physical  uni- 
verse. 

But  in  spite  of  these  great  advantages,  this  idealistic  form  of 
the  monistic  hypothesis  has  to  encounter  difficulties  which 
would  seem  to  be  as  fatal  to  it  as  are  those  that  we  have  consid- 
ered to  materialistic  monism. 

I.  As  Balfour  has  written,  "  In  all  experience  there  is  a  re- 
fractory element  which,  though  it  cannot  be  presented  in  iso- 
lation, nevertheless  refuses  wholly  to  merge  its  being  in  a 

"  The  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  143. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  1 59 

network  of  relations,  necessary  as  these  may  be  to  give  it  '  sig- 
nificance for  us  as  thinking  beings.'  If  so,  whence  does  this 
irreducible  element  arise  ?  The  mind,  we  are  told,  is  the  source 
of  relations.  What  is  the  source  of  that  which  is  related?  "^^ 
We  need  not  fall  back  on  Kant's  contradictory  hypothesis  of 
"  a  thing  in  itself  ",  but  must  we  not  admit  his  dictum  that 
"without  matter  categories  are  empty?"  ^^  That  is,  there  is 
reality  which  even  idealistic  monism  must  leave  unexplained. 
As  an  hypothesis  of  the  universe,  therefore,  it  is  at  least  inade- 
quate. 

2.  Even  where  it  should  be  strongest  it  will  not  work.  That 
is,  it  breaks  down  also  when  it  encounters  the  individuality  of 
the  self  or  ego.  The  reality  of  this  individuality  it  denies.  It 
does  this  by  bringing  all  self -consciousnesses  to  identity  in  the 
divine  self-consciousness.  Because  the  self-consciousness  of 
men  reveals  a  similarity  of  type,  the  Hegelian  infers  unity  of 
substance.  This,  however,  is  as  much  a  non-sequitur  as  though 
we  were  to  argue  that  all  oak  trees  were  one  because  they  were 
all  alike.  Nay,  it  is  a  much  more  glaring  non-sequitur;  for 
the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  every  self -consciousness  is 
consciousness  of  itself  as  an  individual.  In  the  words  of 
Seth,  "  Though  self -hood  involves  a  duality  in  unity,  and 
is  describable  as  subject-object,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that 
each  self  is  a  unique  existence,  which  is  perfectly  impervious, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  to  other  selves — impervious  in  a  fashion  of 
which  the  impenetrability  of  matter  is  a  faint  analogue.  The 
self,  accordingly,  resists  invasion;  in  its  character  of  self  it 
refuses  to  admit  another  self  within  itself,  and  thus  be  made,  as 
it  were,  a  mere  retainer  of  something  else.  The  unity  of  things 
(which  is  not  denied)  cannot  be  properly  expressed  by  making 
it  depend  upon  a  unity  of  the  Self  in  all  thinkers;  for  the  very 
characteristic  of  a  self  is  this  exclusiveness."^^  Moreover,  this 
fact  is  one  with  which  an  Hegelian  specially  is  bound  to  reckon, 
because  with  him  self -consciousness  is  the  ultimate  category. 
Hov/,  then,  may  he  deny  that  exclusiveness,  that  individuality, 

^  The  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  144. 

^  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  Miiller's  translation,  p.  45. 

^  Hegelianism  and  Personality,  p.  216. 


i6o  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  essence  of  self -consciousness? 
No  hypothesis  can  work  which  thus  repudiates  the  innermost 
content  of  that  for  which  it  assumes  to  account.  It  is  not, 
therefore,  too  much  to  say  that  **  the  radical  error  of  Hegelian- 
ism  is  the  unification  of  consciousness  in  a  single  Self." 
Though  it  gave  a  valid  explanation  of  self -consciousness  in 
other  respects,  its  breakdown  in  this  would  be  fatal;  for  this 
is  fundamental. 

3.  Its  explanation,  however,  is  invalid  throughout.  Even  if 
it  might  explaih  away  the  individuality  of  the  self,  it  would 
have  to  be  set  aside  on  other  grounds,  chief  among  them  the 
following : 

Man  is  put  in  the  place  of  God.  This  is  done  by  making,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  human  self -consciousness  and  the  Absolute 
"  identical  quantities  ".  "  God  or  the  Absolute  is  represented 
in  the  system  as  the  last  term  of  a  development  into  which  we 
have  a  perfect  insight ;  we  ourselves,  indeed,  as  absolute  phil- 
osophers, are  equally  the  last  term  of  the  development."  Thus 
in  the  philosophy  of  law,  of  history,  of  aesthetics,  and  in  the  his- 
tory of  philosophy  itself,  the  Absolute  is  attained,  being  simply 
man's  record  and  ultimate  achievement  along  these  lines.  Spe- 
cially is  this  so  in  the  "  philosophy  of  religion,"  where  we  should 
naturally  expect  to  meet  it  least.  The  self -existence  of  God 
seems  to  disappear;  he  has  his  only  reality  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  worshipping  community.  "  God  is  not  a  spirit 
beyond  the  stars,"  says  Hegel ;  "  He  is  Spirit  in  all  spirits  "  :^^ 
but  this  means,  if  not  certainly  to  "  the  Master  "  himself,  at 
least  to  many  of  his  disciples,  that  anything  like  a  separate 
personality  or  self -consciousness  in  the  divine  Being  is  re- 
nounced. In  a  word,  we  are  put  in  the  place  of  God.  Can 
any  such  explanation  of  the  human  self  be  valid?  It  contra- 
dicts that  which  is  scarcely  less  fundamental  in  our  conscious- 
ness than  the  sense  of  individuality,  and  that  is  the  feeling  of 
dependence  on  the  Supernatural.  As  Bacon  has  said,  *  Man 
looks  up  to  God  as  naturally  as  the  dog  does  to  his  master ;  *  ^^ 
but  this  he  could  never  do,  were  there  no  God  save  "  his  own 
great  self  ".     Again,  man  as  well  as  God  is  deprived  of  real 

^Werke,  xi.  24.  "Essay  on  Atheism. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  l6l 

existence.  After  putting  the  former  in  the  place  of  the  latter, 
the  hypothesis  under  review  proceeds  to  destroy  the  former 
also.  This  it  does  by  dividing  and  so,  of  course,  killing  him. 
His  one  concrete  self  is  split  into  two.  Of  these  that  one  of 
which  each  of  us  is  conscious  is  the  man :  and  the  other,  that 
which,  according  to  Kant,  unifies  the  former,  and,  according  to 
Fichte,  thinks  it,  and,  according  to  Schelling,  is  the  ground  of 
it,  and,  according  to  Hegel,  attains  to  self -consciousness,  and 
so  truly  manifests  itself,  in  it,  is  the  Absolute  or  God.  This 
division,  however,  does  not  more  truly,  as  we  have  seen, 
undeify  God  by  practically  identifying  him  with  the  human 
self-consciousness  than  it  dehumanizes  man.  Man  is  not  "  the 
empirical  self  " ;  or  rather,  the  latter  is  only  half  the  man, 
only  the  objective  side  of  his  consciousness.  It  is  a  half,  too, 
that  cannot  exist,  that  cannot  even  be  conceived,  alone.  If 
there  are  to  be  merely  states  of  consciousness,  there  must  be  a 
subjective  self  of  which  they  can  be  the  states  of  consciousness. 
Nor  does  it  help  matters  that  the  place  of  this  subjective  self 
is  taken  by  what  may  be  called  the  divine  Self — a  self  identical 
in  all  men,  a  self,  as  we  have  seen,  identical  with  man.  *'  The 
individual  seems  thus  to  become  no  more  than  an  object  of  the 
divine  Self,  a  series  of  phenomena  threaded  together  and  re- 
viewed by  it — an  office  which  it  performs  in  precisely  the  same 
manner  for  any  number  of  such  so-called  individuals."  Surely 
this  is  to  destroy  man  with  a  vengeance.  He  is  made  the 
mere  object  of  an  undeified  God.  Nothing  in  himself,  he  can 
be  conceived  to  exist  only  in  virtue  of  what  cannot  itself  be  re- 
garded as  self-conscious  save  in  him  and  as  far  as  he.  As 
Seth  puts  it,  "  Human  persons  are,  as  it  were,  the  foci 
in  which  the  impersonal  life  of  thought  momentarily  concen- 
trates itself,  in  order  to  take  stock  of  its  own  contents.  These 
foci  appear  only  to  disappear  in  the  perpetual  process  of  this 
realization."  ^^ 

This  is  to  hypostalize  an  abstraction.  "  The  impersonal  life 
of  thought ",  which  is  admitted  to  constitute  the  subjective 
side  of  human  consciousness,  is,  of  course,  such.  Apart  from 
a  person,  without  a  thinker,  thought  can  not  be,  it  cannot 

^  Hegelianisni  and  Personality,  p.   190. 


l62  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

really  be  conceived  as  being;  it  is  like  an  effect  without  a 
cause,  it  is  an  effect  without  a  cause.  But  the  empirical  self, 
the  phenomenal  aspect  of  consciousness,  is,  by  itself,  equally 
an  abstraction.  States  of  consciousness  presuppose  and  neces- 
sarily involve  a  subject  of  those  states.  As  well  think  of  qual- 
ities as  existing  save  as  the  qualities  of  some  substance.  Nor 
will  it  help  matters  to  take  "  the  impersonal  life  of  thought," 
as  is  done  by  at  least  the  Hegelians  of  the  Left,  as  the  ground 
of  the  individual  self-consciousness.  The  combination  of  two 
abstractions  will  riot  make  one  concrete  reality  any  more  than 
zero  plus  zero  will  make  unity.  Hence,  Seth  is  correct  when 
he  says  of  the  hypothesis  under  review :  "  It  takes  the  notion 
of  knowledge  equivalent  to  a  real  knower;  and  the  form  of 
knowledge  being  one,  it  leaps  to  the  conclusion  that  what 
we  have  before  us  is  the  One  Subject  which  sustains  the 
world,  and  is  the  real  knower  in  all  finite  intelligences.  It 
seems  a  hard  thing  to  say,  but  to  do  this  is  neither  more  nor 
less  than  to  hypostatize  an  abstraction."  ^*  Now  to  do  this 
is,  in  plain  English,  to  make  something  of  nothing. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst.  Having  so  deceived  itself  as  to 
suppose  that  it  has  succeeded  in  working  up  mere  abstractions 
into  a  real  agent,  the  hypothesis  goes  on  to  ascribe  to  its  abso- 
lute Nothing  an  absolutely  impossible  achievement.  This  is 
the  creation  as  it  were  of  reality.  Though  the  Absolute  is  but 
an  idea,  though  it  is  merely  abstract  thought,  the  logical  un- 
folding of  its  categories  is  regarded  as  giving  the  whole  actual 
world  of  nature  and  spirit.  Hegelianism  briefly  expressed 
teaches,  according  to  Schopenhauer,  that  the  universe  is  a  crys- 
tallized syllogism.  This,  however,  cannot  be.  "  There  is  no 
evolution  possible  of  a  fact  from  a  conception."  Logic  can 
develop  the  meaning  of  nature,  but  it  cannot  originate  it.  "  It 
cannot  make  the  real,  it  can  only  describe  what  it  finds." 
Indeed,  it  itself  presupposes  nature  or  reality;  and  without  it, 
it  is,  as  has  been  already  observed,  as  powerless  as  it  is  empty. 
How,  then,  may  we  posit  a  mere  nonentity  like  the  "  Absolute 
Idea  "  as  the  creator  of  such  realities  as  the  physical  realm  and 

^Hegelianism  and  Personality,  p.  29. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  163 

even  the  human  soul?     No  hypothesis  of  the  self  can  be  ten- 
able which  leads  to  a  result  so  irrational. 

c.  Pluralism. — This  is  the  doctrine  that  reality  consists  of 
a  plurality  or  multiplicity  of  distinct  beings.  It  may  be  atom- 
istic as  with  the  atomists,  or  hylozoistic  as  with  Empedocles,  or 
spiritual  as  with  Leibnitz,  or  indifferent  as  with  Herbart,  whose 
"  unknowable  reals  "  produce  the  phenomena  of  both  mind  and 
matter.  Be  its  character,  however,  what  it  may,  it  is  essen- 
tially the  reverse  of  the  hypothesis  just  considered.  Monism, 
in  both  its  materialistic  and  idealistic  forms,  admits  that  the 
Supernatural  is  single,  but  denies  that  there  is  any  radical 
distinction  between  it  and  the  natural.  It  is  but  the  sum  of  the 
natural  in  materialistic  monism ;  it  is  but  the  unity  and  identity 
of  the  natural  in  idealistic  monism.  Pluralism,  on  the  contrary, 
denies  the  singleness  and,  consequently,  the  absoluteness  of  the 
Supernatural,  but  admits  the  reality  of  distinctions.  ''  The 
atoms  of  the  Atomist  are  endowed  with  perpetual  motion  which 
they  do  not  receive  from  a  transcendent  principle,  but  which 
belongs  to  the  essence  ".  We  find  no  "  notion  of  elementary 
unity  "  in  "  the  four  elements  "  of  Empedocles,  but  they  are 
equally  "  original  ".  The  monads  of  Leibnitz  are  each  of  them 
"  little  divinities  in  their  own  department."  The  "  reals  "  of 
Herbart  are  themselves  "  absolute  ".  That  is,  instead  of  one 
all-comprehending  substance  or  one  all-unifying  subject,  we 
have  a  plurality  of  independent,  if  not  unrelated,  substances 
or  subjects. 

This  hypothesis,  according  to  Ward  the  one  now  dominant 
(The  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  49),  owes  its  special  prominence  and 
importance  at  present  largely  to  the  late  William  James. 
"  Reality  ",  he  says,  "  may  exist  in  distributive  form,  in  shape 
not  of  an  all  but  of  a  set  of  caches,  just  as  it  seems  to."^^ 
God,  then,  is  not  "  the  absolute,  but  is  himself  a  part  when  the 
system  is  conceived  pluralistically.  He  has  an  environment, 
he  is  in  time,  he  works  out  a  history  just  like  ourselves."  ^* 
Distinct  from  us,  he  is  not  single  among  us  or  over  us,  being 
finite  and  relative  as  are  we.  That  this  view  has  not  a  little 
to  commend  it  appears  almost  on  its  face.    As  William  James 

^A   Pluralistic    Universe,  p.    129.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  318. 


l64  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

points  out,  God,  because  finite  and  relative,  **  escapes  from  the 
foreignness  from  all  that  is  human,  of  the  static  timeless  perfect 
absolute."  ^^  Inasmuch  as  he  is  like  us  even  to  the  extent  of 
being  limited  as  we  are,  we  can  feel  that  he  is  one  with  us. 
Again,  the  problem  of  evil  becomes  much  easier  from  this 
standpoint.  "  The  line  of  least  resistance,"  says  William 
James,  **  both  in  theology  and  in  philosophy,  is  to  accept,  along 
with  the  superhuman  consciousness,  the  notion  that  it  is  not  all- 
embracing,  the  notion,  in  other  words,  that  there  is  a  God,  but 
that  he  is  finite,  either  in  power  or  in  knowledge,  or  in  both  at 
once."  ^®  We  need  not  then  explain  his  permission  of  evil  : 
we  may  hold  that  he  would  conquer  it,  but  cannot.  Though 
indefinitely  superior  to  us,  he  is  no  more  absolute  than  are  we. 
Hence,  God  and  we  are  bound  together  in  a  bond  of  sympathy 
such  as  can  bind  those  only  who  are  fighting  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  an  as  yet  uncertain  battle.  Once  more,  reality 
seems  to  exist  distributively.  Though  the  universe  may,  in  the 
last  resort,  be  what  William  James  calls  "  a  block-universe,"  ^^ 
that  is,  an  absolute  system ;  still,  it  is  as  "  only  strung  along,  not 
rounded  in  and  closed,"  that  we  become  aware  of  it.  We 
know  it  simply  as  an  aggregation  of  "  caches  ".  Why,  then, 
should  we  admit  more  than  this  into  any  hypothesis  with  regard 
to  it  ?  That  is,  in  not  positing  a  single  because  absolute  Super- 
natural, pluralism  is  at  least  true  to  what  appears. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  this  hypothesis  encounters 
difficulties  neither  few  nor  small.  Among  these  are  the  follow- 
ing: 

I.  Pluralism,  though  true  to  what  appears,  is  not  true  to  all 
that  appears.  It  may  be  true  to  the  world  of  reality  as  the 
senses  make  that  known  to  us,  but  it  is  not  true  even  to  our 
sensations  and  perceptions  as  these  are  interpreted  to  us  by  self- 
consciousness.  For  we  find  in  the  latter,  and  all  men,  in  propor- 
tion as  they  develop  mentally  and  their  development  is  not 
biased  by  philosophy,  find  in  the  latter,  the  idea  of  the  cosmos. 
That  is  to  say,  the  human  race,  in  so  far  as  it  thinks  on  these 
subjects,  thinks  naturally  of  the  world  as  one  system.     Even 

^  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  318. 

''Ibid.,  p.  311.  "Ibid.,  p.  328. 


L 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  165 

Zoroastrianism  was  not  originally  dualistic.  Now  there  is  no 
reason  why  this  natural  and  well  nigh  universal  belief  in 
monism  of  some  kind  should  not  commend  itself  to  us  at  least 
as  much  as  the  exceptional  belief  in  pluralism.  Indeed,  the 
former  stands  better  accredited.  Pluralism  in  its  denial  of  the 
cosmos  denies  one  of  those  native  principles  of  the  mind  which, 
as  we  saw  in  our  discussion  of  positivism,  must  be  admitted  or 
knowledge  even  by  sensation  and  perception  becomes  im- 
possible. 

Were  this  not  so,  however,  the  bare  fact  of  science  would 
establish  that  the  world  is  not  what  William  James  describes 
as  "  only  strung  along  ",  but  is  what  he  calls  "  a  block  uni- 
verse "  or  what  we  prefer  to  term  a  cosmos.  It  is  not,  as  the 
idealistic  monist  holds,  only  a  system  of  thought-relations: 
but  it  is  constructed  throughout  in  accord  with  thought  rela- 
tions ;  and  so  it  is  one  system,  that  is,  a  cosmos.  The  proof  of 
this  is  that  reason  can  and  does  interpret  it  and  that  mind  can 
and  does  understand  it.  Were  it  otherwise,  there  could  be 
no  science  as  there  can  be  no  science  of  any  jumble  of  inde- 
pendent facts.  It  is  only  as  these  can  be  viewed  monistically 
rather  than  pluralistically  that  a  science  of  them  can  be  even 
conceived.  The  progress  of  science  is,  therefore,  the  denial  of 
pluralism.  Though  this  progress  be  small  in  comparison  with 
the  land  yet  to  be  possessed,  enough  has  been  systematized  to 
warrant,  if  not  to  constrain,  the  belief  that  all  can  be  possessed. 
Much  of  the  universe  m^y  still,  as  William  James  would  say, 
not  be  **  closed  in  " ;  but  what  has  been  "  closed  in  "  indicates 
as  the  reason  why  more  has  not  been  "  closed  in  ",  that  our 
reason  is  limited,  not  that  the  world  is  not  a  rationalized  whole. 

2.  Where  pluralism  claims  to  be  strongest  it  is  weakest.  The 
doctrine  of  a  finite  God  appears  to  commend  itself  to  the  heart. 
At  first  sight  a  God  who  would  prevent  evil,  but  cannot,  is  more 
attractive  than  one  who  permits  it  though,  since  he  is  omnipo- 
tent, he  could  prevent  it.  On  second  thought,  however,  not  only 
is  the  mind  unable  to  tolerate  a  finite  God,  but  even  the  heart 
can  "  see  no  beauty  in  him  that  it  should  desire  him  ".  On  the 
one  hand,  omnipotence  and  omniscience  may  be  variously 
conceived;   but,   whether   as  held  by  the   savage   or  by   the 


l66  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

scholar,  they  are  essential  to  his  conception  of  God.  The  rea- 
son for  this  is  that  man  has  a  primitive  belief  in  the  infinite. 
As,  therefore,  he  must  naturally  believe  in  God,  so  he  must 
naturally  believe  him  to  be  infinite.  He  could  not  think  of  God 
as  the  greatest  and  the  best  that  he  knows  unless  he  did  so.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  precisely  the  omnipotence  and  the  omni- 
science of  God  which  give  its  unique  worth  to  God's  love  for 
us  and  sympathy  with  us.  These  can  be  supremely  precious  be- 
cause they  differ  from  all  other  love  and  sympathy  not  only 
in  degree  but  in  kind.  It  is  just  becavfse  we  can  feel  that 
God  can  do  for  us  and  can  be  to  us  all  that  "  love  which  passes 
knowledge  "  can  prompt  that  we  stay  our  hearts  on  him  and 
find  perfect  peace  in  him.  It  is  easier  far  to  trust  that  he  loves 
us  even  when  he  chastens  us  and  that  he  chastens  us  "  for  our 
profit  that  we  may  be  partakers  of  his  holiness  "  than  it  would 
be  to  rest  our  souls  on  him  if  we  had  even  to  suspect  that,  in 
spite  of  all  his  greatness,  he  was  limited  in  power  and  wis- 
dom as  are  we.  There  would  always  be  the  fearful  possibility 
that  at  last  we  might  be  cast  away.  Even  Paul,  had  he  been  a 
pluralist,  could  never  have  exclaimed,  ^*  For  I  am  persuaded 
that  nothing  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God 
which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord  "  (Rom.  viii.  38,  39).  Thus 
pluralism  fails  just  where  it  thinks  itself  the  strongest.  It 
compromises  with  the  head  for  the  sake  of  the  heart  only  to 
be  repudiated  by  the  heart. 

3.  Logically,  pluralism  must  give  the  lie  to  our  religious 
nature  and  thus  silence  and  at  last  destroy  it.  As  Derr  has 
written,  "  The  religious  implications  of  pluralism  are  obvious. 
All  the  various  *  Eaches  '  are  coeternal  and  therefore  coequal, 
and  enter  into  unions  or  combinations  with  one  another  of  their 
own  free  will.  Nothing  can  be  compulsory  amid  the  vast  de- 
mocracy of  uncaused  beings,  for  they  are  all  independent  of  one 
another,  and  exist  by  the  necessity  of  their  own  nature.  They 
are  all  finite  in  power,  for  the  sphere  of  activity  of  each  is 
limited  by  each,  hence  a  multitude  of  infinite  beings  is  impos- 
sible. Nor  can  we,  with  any  show  of  reason,  assume  that  any 
one  of  these  equal  beings  can  lift  itself  so  high  above  the 
rest  as  to  assert  sovereignty  over  them.    All  the  eaches  being 


I 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  167 

gods  in  their  own  right,  there  is  no  such  a  being  as  A  God; 
the  word,  indeed,  loses  all  its  significance.  And  thus  pluralism 
or  modern  polytheism  ends  in  absolute  nihilism,  and  the  re- 
ligious sentiment  must  necessarily  go  by  default."^^  Can 
any  hypothesis  be  true  which  thus  destroys  that  which  is 
noblest  in  the  noblest  being  in  the  world  that  it  is  assumed  to 
account  for? 

These,  then,  are  the  hypotheses  which  contradict  that  doc- 
trine of  the  Supernatural  which  Christianity  presupposes  and 
which,  accordingly,  we  would  vindicate :  positivism,  which  de- 
nies the  Supernatural  altogether,  both  its  separateness  and  its 
singleness;  monism,  which,  in  either  of  its  forms,  admits  its 
singleness  but  denies  its  separateness  from  the  world;  and 
pluralism,  which  denies  its  singleness  but  admits  its  separate- 
ness. Inasmuch  as  each  one  of  these  has  been  shown  to  be 
untenable,  does  it  not  follow  that  we  should  approach  the 
only  other  hypothesis  possible  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  the 
hypothesis  that  there  is  a  real  Supernatural  both  separate  from 
the  world  even  as  immanent  in  it  and  single  in  it  and  over  it 
— does  it  not  now  follow  that  we  should  take  up  this  hypothesis 
with  a  presumption  at  least  that  it  is  true  ?  Some  world-view 
that  really  explains  the  universe  there  must  be,  and  this  would 
seem  to  be  the  only  other  possible. 

This  presumption  is  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  the  Supernatural  would,  if  true,  meet  all  the 
necessary  conditions.  Thus  positivism,  as  we  have  seen,  fails 
to  interpret  even  the  world  as  made  known  by  the  senses, 
through  denying  those  innate  ideas  only  under  whose  guid- 
ance can  the  senses  conduct  to  knowledge:  but  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  Supernatural  both  recognizes  and  guarantees 
these  ideas;  as  an  idea  it  is  one  of  them,  and  its  subject,  the 
supreme  Intelligence,  is  the  author  of  them,  "  the  light  that 
lighteneth  every  man  coming  into  the  world." 

Again,  if  monism  breaks  down,  in  its  materialistic  form  be- 
cause it  denies  an  absolute  Spirit  separate  from  the  physical 
world,  and  in  its  idealistic  form  because  it  denies  the  separate- 
ness of  such  a  Spirit  from  all  finite  spirits;  so  the  view  of  the 

**  The  Uncaused  Being  and  The  Criterion  of  Truth,  p.  39. 


l68  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

Supernatural  that  we  would  vindicate  supplies  in  both  cases 
the  deficiency  by  holding  that  God  is  not  only  single  in  him- 
self, but  absolutely  distinct  from  the  world  whether  of  matter 
or  of  spirit. 

Once  more,  if  pluralism  fails,  and  must  fail,  permanently 
to  satisfy  man's  mental,  emotional  and  religious  natures  for 
the  reason  that  its  Supernatural  is  not  single  and  so  cannot 
be  absolute,  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Supernatural 
comes  up  to  the  requirements  even  in  this  respect;  for  it  con- 
ceives of  the  Supernatural  as  him  "  by  whom  were  all  things: 
created  that  are  in  heaven,  and  that  are  in  earth,  visible  and 
invisible,  whether  they  be  thrones  or  dominions,  or  principali- 
ties, or  powers :  all  things  were  created  by  him,  and  for  him : 
and  he  is  before  all  things,  and  by  him  all  things  consist" 
(Coll.  i.  i6,  17). 

Moreover,  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Supernatural  is 
a  satisfactory  hypothesis  in  fact  as  well  as  in  logic.  To 
prove  and  to  illustrate  this,  it  is  necessary  simply  to  recall 
what  has  been  said  with  reference  to  the  "  Importance  of 
the  Supernatural  ".  As  we  have  seen,  not  only  do  Chris- 
tian apologetics  and  Christian  dogmatics  presuppose  the  Super- 
natural in  the  sense  in  which  this  paper  conceives  it  as  the 
end  of  the  former  and  the  subject  of  the  latter ;  but  philosophy, 
science,  morality,  religion,  human  progress  and  civilization, — 
all  depend  on  its  reality  and,  were  there  opportunity,  could 
be  shown  to  prosper  in  proportion  as  this  reality  is  recognized. 
Could  this  be,  if  the  Christian  view  of  the  Supernatural  were 
untrue?  That  a  doctrine  will  work  does  not  of  itself  prove  it 
to  be  true ;  but  that  it  has  worked  well — this  must,  at  any  rate, 
raise  a  presumption  that  it  is  true,  and  must  greatly  strengthen 
any  presumption  of  this  sort  already  existing.  Can  less  than 
this  be  meant  by  the  Highest  of  all  authorities  when  he  says 
of  false  prophets,  "  Ye  shall  know  them  by  their  fruits  "  (Mt. 
vii.  16)  ?  Clearly,  then,  the  burden  of  proof  is  on  those  who 
would  deny  the  existence  of  the  Supernatural.  It  is  for  them 
to  refute,  it  is  not  for  us  to  establish,  the  Christian  position. 
Strictly,  according  to  the  law  of  parsimony,  no  argument  for 
the  Christian  hypothesis  is  called  for.    It  is  the  only  one  that 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  1 69 

has  not  been  proved  to  be  untenable;  it  has  been  shown  to  be 
satisfactory  in  theory ;  it  has  been  found  to  be  indispensable  in 
practice.  Therefore,  the  threefold  argument  about  to  be  ad- 
vanced for  it  ought  at  least  to  be  received  with  the  highest 
respect  and  to  be  considered  as  from  the  start  having  every- 
thing in  its  favor. 

I.  The  argument  from  the  consent  of  philosophy.. — Most 
schools  of  philosophy  declare  for  the  Supernatural.  In  a  sense, 
all  of  them  do.  Thus  Comte,  the  founder  of  positivism,  re- 
pudiates the  Supernatural  avowedly,  but  he  devises  a  very  com- 
plicated system  of  worship  and  finds  in  "  aggregate  humanity  " 
an  object  for  it.  Even  this  most  significant  concession  does 
not  satisfy  his  successors.  Herbert  Spencer,  whether  we  re- 
gard him  as  a  positivist  or  a  monist  or  an  agnostic,  not  un- 
justly represents  them;  and  he  comes  out  clearly  and  strongly 
for  the  Supernatural.  "  The  axiomatic  truths  of  physical 
science  unavoidably  postulate  Absolute  Being  as  their  common 
basis.  The  persistence  of  the  universe  is  the  persistence  of 
that  Unknown  Cause,  Power  or  Force  which  is  manifested 
to  us  through  all  phenomena.  Such  is  the  foundation  of  any 
possible  system  of  positive  knowledge.  Deeper  than  demon- 
stration— deeper  even  than  definite  cognition — deep  as  the  very 
nature  of  the  mind  is  the  postulate  at  which  we  have  arrived. 
Its  authority  transcends  all  other  whatever;  for  not  only  is  it 
given  in  the  constitution  of  our  own  consciousness,  but  it  is 
impossible  to  imagine  a  consciousness  so  constituted  as  not 
to  give  it  .  .  .  Thus  the  belief  which  this  datum  consti- 
tutes has  a  higher  warrant  than  any  other  whatever."  *^  Even 
Haeckel,  the  great  exponent  of  monism,  while  repudiating  all 
being  above  nature,  concludes  his  "  Monistic  Confession  of 
Faith  "  with  the  words :  "  May  God,  the  Spirit  of  the  Good, 
the  Beautiful,  and  the  True,  be  with  us."^^  Sq^  ^oo,  the  first 
of  modem  pluralists,  William  James,  even  when  arguing 
for  a  finite  God,  admits  that  the  hypothesis  of  the  absolute 
"  must  in  spite  of  its  irrational  features,  still  be  left  open,^^ 
and  seems  to  claim  as  the  reason  why  it  must  be  so  that  "  it 

*^  First  Principles,  pp.  256,  258,  98.  *"  Monism,  p.  89. 

*^A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  125. 


170  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

gives  peace  ".**  These  concessions  do  not  class  their  authors 
with  the  Supernaturalists ;  but  are  they  not  testimony,  strong 
just  because  it  was  unexpected  and  is  unwilling,  to  the 
truth  of  the  supernaturalistic  position?  Thinkers  can  not 
leave  this  position  and  not  try  to  find  a  substitute  for  it.  Thus 
they  prove  at  least  its  necessity  and  so  indirectly  its  truth. 

If  such  is  the  force  of  the  teaching  even  of  antisupernatural- 
ists,  it  is  not  too  much  to  claim  that  philosophy  as  a  whole  on 
the  whole  declares  for  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural,  if  not 
in  the  precise  form  of  the  Christian  doctrine,  yet  in  what  ap- 
proximates and  tends  towards  it.  Did  not  our  limits  forbid, 
nothing  could  be  easier  than  to  illustrate  and  establish  this 
statement  from  such  masters  in  philosophy  as  Plato,  Aristotle, 
Cicero,  Bacon,  Descartes,  Berkeley,  Kant,  Hamilton,  Lotze, 
and  many  others.  Indeed,  as  Lindsay  writes,  "  We  may  surely 
say  that  it  has  become  more  clearly  manifest  that  what  thought 
as  to  the  Primal  Reality  known  as  God  testifies  to  is,  above  all 
else,  the  fact  that  such  Inscrutable  Reality,  or  the  Unknowable, 
does  undoubtedly  exist."  ^^ 

This  amounts  to  a  great  deal.  It  shows  that  the  ablest 
thinkers  in  all  ages,  though  they  may  not  speak  as  religious 
teachers  and  though  some  of  them  may  speak  even  as  the 
enemies  of  the  Christian  religion,  nevertheless,  give  it  as  the 
last  result  of  their  deepest  and  best  thinking  that  the  Supernat- 
ural both  does  and  must  exist.  This,  of  course,  is  not  demon- 
stration. The  objective  cannot  be  deduced  from  the  subjec- 
tive. The  general  consent,  however,  that  we  have  been  con- 
sidering does  prove  that  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  Super- 
natural is  not  the  idiosyncrasy  of  some  peculiar  thinkers,  and 
that  we  must  grant  it  to  be  a  true  belief  or  allow  the  useless- 
ness  and  even  the  folly  of  the  best  thinking  in  every  age 
and  the  world  over.  But  this  is  not  sufficient.  It  may  be 
urged  that  philosophy  is  the  product  of  an  artificial  humanity, 
and  that,  consequently,  it  does  not  voice  the  natural  and  so 
best  judgment  of  the  race.     We  need,  therefore,  to  appeal  to, 

2.  The  necessity  of  religion. — Religion  is  a  universal  phe- 

**A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  114. 

*^  Recent  Advances  in  Theistic  Philosophy,  p.  5. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  171 

nomenon.  All  men  as  men  and  because  men  are  religious 
in  one  way  or  another.  Even  those  thinkers  who  have  yielded 
themselves  to  an  intense  and  absorbing  skepticism  and  whose 
religious  nature  has  in  consequence  become  atrophied  confess 
the  moral  and  spiritual  necessity  of  religion,  and  their  skepti- 
cism makes  their  reluctant  confession  all  the  more  impres- 
sive. We  have  seen  this  to  have  been  so  in  the  case  of  Comte. 
It  might  as  readily  have  been  shown  to  have  been  so  in  the 
case  of  J.  S.  Mill  and  of  many  others.  What  is  even  more 
to  the  point  is  that  no  tribe  has  been  found  so  degraded  as 
not  to  evidence  at  least  the  beginnings  of  religion.  The 
claims  that  such  had  been  discovered  of  scientists  like  Sir  John 
Lubbock  and  of  travelers  like  Sir  Samuel  Baker  have  all 
been  refuted  by  wider  and  more  careful  investigation.  For 
example,  Roskoff  has  declared  that  "  no  tribe  has  yet  occurred 
without  trace  of  religious  sentiments."  Peschel  has  decidedly 
denied  "  any  tribe  having  been  found  quite  without  religious 
emotions  and  ideas."  In  like  vein,  Hellwald  affirms  that  *'  no 
tribes  completely  without  religion  have  thus  far  been  met 
with."  ^^  The  universality  of  religion  would  seem,  therefore, 
to  be  a  commonplace  of  anthropological  science;  and  the  fact 
that,  no  matter  how  debased,  man  is  never  observed  to  be 
destitute  of  something  which  to  him  is  religion  would  appear 
to  show  that  it  belongs  to  his  essence.  In  a  word,  religion 
is  so  universal  among  men  that  it  must  be  necessary  to  man. 
As  Kellogg  puts  it,  *'  Its  beliefs  have  been  so  universally  ac- 
cepted in  all  ages  by  men  of  both  the  highest  and  the  lowest 
degree  of  culture,  that  we  can  hardly  avoid  the  conclusion  that 
they  must  be  due  to  a  certain  instinct  of  man's  nature."  '^'^ 
So  far  as  can  be  seen,  he  can  no  more  get  away  from  religion 
than  a  beast  can  escape  the  power  of  instinct.  Indeed,  the 
religious  feeling  is  man's  instinct,  and  so  the  highest  and 
noblest  of  all  instincts. 

In  the  next  place,  religion  is  impossible,  if  there  be  no  under- 
lying sense  of  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural.  Were  this  ab- 
sent, whatever  we  might  have,  we  should  not  have  what  we 

"Lindsay's  Recent  Advances  in  Theistic  Philosophy,  p.  54. 
"Handbook  of  Comparative  Religion,  p.  10. 


172  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

recognize  as  religion.  From  the  highest  religion  to  the  lowest, 
this  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural,  of  that  which  is 
above  the  world  and  which,  in  so  far  forth,  is  distinct  from 
the  world  and  itself  single,  is  the  one  common  and  characteris- 
tic element.  Let  there  be  nothing  left  of  religion  but  a  vague 
sentiment,  an  undefined  aspiration,  an  unintelligent  impulse; 
still,  so  far  as  it  goes,  this  is  a  belief  in  and  a  craving  for  a 
real  Supernatural  and  such  a  Superntural  as  we  would  vin- 
dicate. "  In  most,  if  not  in  all  cases  where  men  worship  gods 
many,"  says  Kellogg,  "  there  is  discoverztble  in  the  back- 
ground of  the  religious  consciousness  the  dim  outline  of  one 
sole  Power,  of  which  the  many  who  are  worshipped  are  either 
different  manifestations,  or  to  which  they  hold  a  position 
strictly  subordinate."  ^^  Were  this  not  so,  however,  our  argu- 
ment would  not  be  weakened.  What  is  significant  is  not  that 
the  Supernatural  is  conceived  in  all  religions  essentially  as 
we  have  defined  it,  or  that  it  is  conceived  at  all;  it  is  that  all 
religions,  even  the  lowest,  reveal  in  their  development  the  ten- 
dency toward  such  a  conception:  just  as  in  appetite  the  sig- 
nificant thing  is  not  that  animals  have  from  the  first  a  clear 
idea  of  nourishment  or  that  they  have  any  idea  of  it ;  it  is  that 
the  tendency  to  suck  always  develops  into  the  desire  for  and 
the  eating  of  what  will  nourish.  That  is,  as  Edward  Caird  has 
so  well  shown  in  his  Evolution  of  Religion,  it  is  the  end 
and  not  the  beginning  of  a  process  of  development  which  re- 
veals its  nature.  Hence,  if  religion  be,  as  we  have  tried  to 
make  plain,  the  expression  of  man's  distinctive  instinct ;  so  the 
religious  instinct  is  the  instinct  for  a  true  Supernatural  just 
as  the  young  animal's  tendency  to  suck  is  because  of  an  instinct 
for  real  food. 

Now  we  find  that  every  instinct  has  an  object  fitted  to  grat- 
ify it.  According  to  all  observation,  the  belief  in  the  reality  of 
the  object  that  its  craving  implies  is  justified.  There  is  its 
mother's  milk  to  satisfy  the  sucking  child.  There  is  the 
southern  land  to  satisfy  the  swallow's  instinct  in  early  autumn 
to  fly  to  the  southern  land.  There  is  the  ocean  to  satisfy  the 
young  fish's  instinct,  which  constrains  it,  though  it  has  never 

*^  Handbook  of  Comparative  Religion,  p.  7. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  173 

been  away  from  the  spawning  grounds  far  up  the  stream,  to 
swim  toward  the  ocean.  Hence,  to  prove  the  existence  of  an 
instinct  is  to  prove  the  reaHty  of  the  object  fitted  to  gratify  it. 
Why,  then,  should  it  not  be  so  in  the  case  of  the  instinct  for  the 
Supernatural  ?    Nay,  how  could  it  not  be  so  ? 

This  does  not  demonstrate  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural. 
It  does,  however,  demonstrate  that  the  Supernatural  exists : 
or  else,  that  there  is  an  exception  to  the  apparently  univer- 
sal and  beneficent  law  of  instinct;  that  this  exception  is  in  the 
case  of  the  highest  of  all  animals,  man ;  and  that  it  is  in  the  in- 
stance of  what  in  him  is  noblest.  That  is,  the  law  of  instinct 
breaks  down,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  only  in  the  one  creature 
that  is  capable  of  appreciating  it,  and  with  reference  to  that 
element  of  his  nature  which  exalts  him  most.  This  is  not 
demonstration,  but  is  it  not  a  reductio  ad  absurdum?  This 
will  be  shown  yet  more  clearly,  if  we  consider, 

3.  The  necessity  in  thought. — There  is  thought.  This  no 
one  can  deny.  In  denying  it  we  should  affirm  it  :  the  denial 
involves  thinking,  it  is  itself  thinking.  Thus  thought  itself 
is  a  necessity. 

There  is  a  necessity,  in  thought.  Not  only  can  we  not  help 
thinking,  but  we  must  think  in  accord  with  certain  rational 
principles.  For  example,  if  you  think  of  finite  being,  you 
must  believe  in  other  being  that  is  its  ground.  The  former, 
because  it  is  finite,  cannot  but  be  dependent;  and  what  is  con- 
ceived as  dependent  can  be  conceived  only  as  we  posit,  defin- 
itely or  not,  that  which  can  be  its  ground.  We  can  no  more 
think  otherwise  than  we  can  think  of  a  building  that  stands  and 
yet  has  nothing  on  which  to  stand.  There  is  a  principle  in  the 
case  that  thought  cannot  set  aside  any  more  than  it  can  cause 
itself  to  cease.  Again,  you  cannot  think  of  an  event,  a  change, 
an  effect,  and  not  act  on  and  thus  really  think  in  accord  with 
the  principle  that  everything  that  is  finite,  that  begins  to  be, 
must  have  a  cause.  If  you  are  in  pain,  you  try  to  find  out  what 
produces  it,  and  thus  you  show  that,  whatever  may  be  your 
theory,  you  believe  that  there  must  be  something  or  must  have 
been  something  with  power  to  produce  it,  that  is,  a  real  cause 
of  it.     You  may  even  teach  with  Hamilton,  that  there  is  no 


174 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


positive  power  in  a  cause;  that  the  cause  of  each  and  every 
phenomenon  is  "  a  negative  impotence  *' ;  that  we  believe  in 
the  reaHty  of  causation,  not  because  it  is  real,  but  because  we 
cannot  think  it  unreal.  Still,  even  this  theory  will  not  make  us 
any  abler  to  think  it  unreal.  Indeed,  our  denial  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  causation  will  only  render  more  conspicuous  and  sig- 
nificant our  practical  recognition  of  it.  We  can  no  more 
help  acting  on  it  than  we  can  cease  thinking.  Once  more, 
we  cannot  think  of  acts  and  not  regard  them  as  the  acts  of 
some  subject,  of  some  agent.  We  can  consider  acts,  as  gov- 
erning, as  making,  as  upholding,  as  creating,  by  themselves; 
but  we  cannot  conceive  of  them  as  taking  place  by  themselves. 
Even  when  our  abstraction  of  them  as  acts  from  their  subject 
is  complete,  it  never  occurs  to  us  to  suppose  that  in  reality  they 
are  either  separated  or  separable  from  it.  Though  we  may 
think  of  them  singly  we  must  believe  the  act  to  be  impossible 
apart  from  its  subject.  This  is  a  principle  that  thought  is 
bound  to  observe.  It  can  no  more  transcend  this  principle 
than  it  can  arrest  itself.  Other  necessary  laws  of  thought 
might  be  mentioned,  but  these  are  sufficient  for  our  purpose. 
These  principles  reveal  the  necessity  of  the  Supernatural. 
For  example,  the  ground  that,  as  we  have  seen,  every  thought 
of  the  finite  presupposes  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  Super- 
natural. Unless  you  posit  this  and  thus  find  in  it  a  self-subsis- 
tent  ground  of  being,  the  finite  universe,  which  cannot  be  con- 
ceived without  a  ground,  is  left  without  one.  Thus  this  prin- 
ciple of  thought  discloses  the  necessity,  if  not  the  nature,  of  the 
Supernatural.  Though  it  does  not  show  us  all  that  it  is,  it  does 
show  us  that  it  must  be.  Only  its  real  existence  can  satisfy  the 
demands  of  thought.  In  like  manner,  the  manifold  changes  and 
effects  which  make  up  the  world  require  an  absolute  or  un- 
caused cause,  and  so  reveal  the  necessity  of  the  Supernatural. 
Unless  we  assume  this  Supernatural  cause,  nature  becomes  at 
last  a  causeless  effect;  and  this,  because  nature  is  essentially 
finite,  is  a  contradiction.  Nor  will  it  help  us  to  regard  the  series 
of  finite  causes  and  effects  that  constitute  the  world  as  infinite. 
This  pushes  the  difficulty  off  where  we  cannot  see  it,  but  in  so 
doing  it  only  aggravates  it.     An  infinite  series  of  finite  causes 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  175 

and  effects  is  as  truly  without  a  sufficient  reason  as  is  a  finite 
series  of  such  causes  and  effects.  The  main  difference  between 
the  two  is  that  the  former  is  an  infinite  contradiction,  whereas 
the  latter  is  but  a  finite  one.  Nor  does  the  fact  that  we  cannot 
go  back  in  the  former  case  even  in  thought  to  the  point  at 
which  the  series  ends  and  where  we  discern  the  necessity  of 
the  Self-subsistent  Uncaused  Cause  render  it  less  a  necessity. 
As  vigorously  as  though  it  could  discern  just  where  such  a 
cause  was  required  does  the  mind  insist  on  its  necessity.  Only 
in  such  a  cause  can  it  find  the  power  that  it  cannot  conceive  of 
the  universe  as  not  demanding.  Thus  this  principle,  too,  makes 
known  to  us  the  necessity  of  the  Supernatural.  It  does  not  set 
it  before  us  as  in  a  picture,  but  it  will  not  suffer  us  not  to 
think  of  it  as  the  painter  of  the  passing  world-picture  that  we 
cannot  help  seeing.  So  also  the  Absolute  Subject  that  such 
acts  as  the  creating  and  the  upholding  of  the  universe  postu- 
late is  the  Supernatural.  As  every  act  evinces  a  subject  in 
action,  so  these  acts  cannot  but  evidence  an  Unconditioned  or 
Supernatural  Subject.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  these  acts 
are  and  must  be  themselves  unconditioned,  and  so  can  be  the 
acts  only  of  an  unconditioned  subject.  Nor  may  it  be  disputed 
that  these  acts  are  and  must  be  themselves  unconditioned. 
Let  it  be  remembered  that  by  the  universe  we  mean  the  organ- 
ism into  the  constitution  of  which  enter  all  finite,  related,  con- 
ditioned beings  and  things,  and  this  will  at  once  appear.  It  is 
not  more  evident  that  such  a  universe  requires,  because  it  is 
finite,  relative,  conditioned,  to  be  upheld  than  that  the  uphold- 
ing of  it  cannot  depend  in  any  way  on  it,  and  so  must  itself  be 
essentially  unconditioned.  This  should  be  as  clear  as  that  the 
unfailing  energizing  of  Atlas  in  the  fable  would  have  had  to 
be  absolutely  unconditioned  by  the  world  that  he  was  supposed 
to  support  on  his  broad  shoulders.  Thus  this  principle,  as  those 
already  noticed  and  as  others  that  could  be  adduced,  is  not  only 
a  necessity  of  thought,  but  necessarily  makes  known  in  thought 
the  Supernatural.  If  it  does  not  unveil  all  its  lineaments,  it 
does  reveal  its  necessity  in  the  necessity  of  its  acts. 

In  short,  the  Supernatural  is  at  the  end  of  all  thinking.    Take 
a  blade  of  grass  and  think  long  enough  and  deeply  enough  with 


176  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

reference  to  it,  and  you  come  up  against  the  Supernatural. 
Every  line  of  consistent  thinking  as  to  reality  brings  you 
to  it  as  directly,  as  inevitably,  as  under  the  Roman  Empire  all 
roads  led  to  the  "  Eternal  City."  If  any  do  not  find  this  to  be 
so,  it  is  not  because  it  is  not  so;  it  is  only  because  they  do 
not  follow  their  thought  to  its  conclusion.  Thought  is  not  more 
a  necessity  than  the  Supernatural  is  the  necessity  in  thought. 
We  cannot  think  truly  and  deeply  and  not  believe  practically 
in  its  reality.  Hence,  again,  the  already  noticed  universality 
of  religion.  It  is  not  only  the  manifestat}t)n  of  what  we  may 
call  the  instinct  of  humanity;  it  is  also  the  expression  of  the 
most  profound  necessity  of  rational  thought.  As  Calderwood 
puts  it,  **A11  intelligence  moves  toward  the  Absolute  or  Self- 
existent;"^^  and,  '*  The  essential  implication  of  intelligence 
is  that  all  finite  being  is  traced  to  a  self-existent  fountain  of 
Being."  5« 

Now  "  we  find  that  whatever  is  necessary  to  thought  in  the 
sphere  of  the  natural  has  its  correspondent  reality  in  being." 
Does  thought  afiirm  that  every  finite  object  requires  a  ground 
of  support?  Scientific  investigation  discovers  it:  even  the 
earth,  that  seems  to  hang  unsupported  in  mid  air,  swings  se- 
curely in  an  orbit  made  by  the  action  of  well-known  forces. 
Does  thought  declare  that  every  effect  must  have  a  cause? 
The  scientist  ferrets  it  out :  though  with  the  naked  eye  he  can- 
not see  the  microbe  that  causes  the  pestilence,  he  detects  and 
studies  it  with  the  microscope.  Does  thought  refuse  to  con- 
ceive of  acts  save  as  the  acts  of  some  subject?  We  always 
find  the  subject,  if  we  look  long  and  carefully  enough:  by 
the  ripple  on  the  water  far  away  we  may  know  that  it  is  blow- 
ing, though  we  neither  hear  nor  feel  the  wind ;  but  let  us  pull 
toward  the  ripple,  and  soon  the  breeze  itself  strikes  our  droop- 
ing sails.  If,  then,  these  principles  are  thus  found  to  be  trust- 
worthy in  the  sphere  of  the  natural  or  finite,  why  should  we 
not  trust  them  in  the  sphere  of  the  Supernatural  or  Infinite  ? 

Nay,  we  must  trust  them.  Grant  that  they  are  "  regulative 
principles."  Still,  it  is  not  of  intelligence  in  itself,  but  of  in- 
telligence as  that  concerns  itself  with  reality  that  they  are 

*•  Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy,  p.  257.  °*  Ibid.,  p.  259. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  177 

regulative.  As  Calderwood  puts  it,  *'  The  whole  force  of 
these  principles  is  seen  to  be  concerned  with  objective  re- 
ality. "^^  Whether  there  be  reality  or  not  outside  of  the  think- 
ing process,  the  significance  of  these  principles  is  that  they 
point  to  it  and  insist  on  it.  They  would  not  be  what  they  are, 
they  would  not  be  at  all,  if  they  did  not  do  this.  This  demand 
of  theirs  for  reality  objective  to  themselves  is  what  gives  to 
them  their  character.  It  is  their  significance.  Moreover,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  the  reality  which  they  demand  is,  in  the  last 
analysis,  self -existent,  uncaused  and  unconditioned.  This,  if 
we  may  so  speak,  is  the  significance  of  their  significance.  If, 
therefore,  we  verify  or  prove  these  principles  on  their  lower 
side,  as  we  have  seen  that  we  do,  we  may  not  distrust  them  on 
the  higher.  As  Calderwood  writes,  "  We  cannot  regard  them 
as  trustworthy  in  their  application  to  the  concrete  yet  un- 
trustworthy in  their  very  significance."^^  Thus,  though  we 
were  not  able  to  verify  them  on  their  higher  or  supernatural 
side,  verification  on  their  lower  or  natural  side  would  imply 
verity  on  their  higher.  We  should  be  bound  to  believe  in  the 
objective  reality  as  well  as  in  the  mental  necessity  of  the 
Supernatural,  even  though  we  had  no  faculties  with  which  to 
apprehend  it;  just  as  the  astronomer  without  a  telescope  is 
sure  that,  if  he  had  a  telescope,  he  would  find  a  splendid  planet 
where  his  calculations,  which  hitherto  have  been  invariably 
sustained,  tell  him  that  one  must  be.  That  is,  a  principle  could 
not  justify  itself  in  every  case  within  the  limits  of  observation, 
if  in  its  very  significance  it  were  untrue;  and  the  regulative 
principles  that  we  have  been  considering  would  be  untrue  in 
their  very  significance,  if  the  Supernatural,  on  whose  objective 
existence  they  insist  as  the  reality  of  realities,  were  not  itself 
of  all  realities  the  most  real. 

It  is  not  the  fact,  moreover,  that  the  principles  in  question 
have  no  verification  when  applied  to  the  Supernatural.  On  the 
contrary,  there  is  a  consciousness  of  God.  As  Shedd  says, 
it  is  *'  a  universal  and  abiding  form  of  human  conscious- 
ness." ^^     In  addition  to  the  craving  after,  the  instinct  for, 

'^^  Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy,  p.  264.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  264. 

^Dogmatic  Theology,  Vol.  i,  p.  210, 


178 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


the  Supernatural,  which  has  already  been  noticed  as  the 
universal  and  necessary  root  of  religion,  all  men  may  know, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  most  men  do  know,  the  Supernatural. 
Though  they  can  neither  see  nor  hear  nor  touch  nor  taste  nor 
smell  it,  they  are  often  awed  by  it;  in  their  more  serious 
moments  they  feel  its  presence ;  and  so  they  must  be  conscious 
of  it.  Thus  the  principles  which  we  have  been  considering  are 
verified  in  the  case  of  the  Supernatural  as  in  that  of  the  natural. 
The  telescope  of  Galle  revealed  the  planet  which  the  calcula- 
tions of  Leverrier  and  of  Adams  necessarily  called  for  as  the 
cause  of  certain  perturbations  of  the  solar  system;  and,  in 
like  manner,  we  are  conscious  of  the  Supernatural  that  reason 
with  equal  urgency  demands  as  the  ground  and  cause  of  the 
universe  and  the  agent  involved  in  its  creation  and  preservation 
and  government.  Nor  may  it  be  said  that  this  consciousness 
of  the  Supernatural  is  a  mere  hallucination.  It  is  too  general 
and  especially  too  constant  to  be  thus  explained.  Illusions 
vanish  when  the  light  is  turned  on  them.  The  so-called  illu- 
sion of  the  Supernatural,  however,  continues,  though  from  the 
very  first  every  effort  has  been  made  and  is  being  made  to  ex- 
pose it.  Nor  may  it  be  urged  either  that  some  have  lost  this 
God-consciousness  and  some  seem  never  to  have  had  it. 
This  amounts  to  nothing  in  view  of  its  prevalence  and  persist- 
ence. He  who  does  not  use  his  eyes  in  the  light  will  lose 
them,  and  the  fish  that  are  now  hatched  in  the  streams  in  the 
Mammoth  Cave  have  none  to  lose.  The  significant  fact  is 
not  that  there  are  a  few  men  who  appear  to  have  no  conscious- 
ness of  the  Supernatural;  it  is  rather  that  not  a  single  indi- 
vidual was  ever  conscious  that  there  was  not  a  Supernatural. 
Says  La  Bruyere,  "  Je  sens  qu'il  y  a  un  dieu  et  je  ne  sens 
pas  qu'il  n'y  en  ait  point."  ^* 

Beyond  all  this,  the  ultimate  facts,  the  best  attested  realities, 
when  considered  objectively,  that  is,  in  themselves,  quite  as 
much  as  when  viewed  subjectively,  that  is,  as  necessities  of 
thought,  reveal  the  Supernatural  as  the  fact  which  they  all 
presuppose,  as  the  reality  which  alone  gives  to  them  reality. 
Thus  they  evidence  the  Supernatural  as  truly  as  a  building  evi- 

^  Les  Caract^res,  c.  i6. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  179 

dences  its  foundation.  For  example,  finite  reality  implies 
infinite  or  self-subsistent  reality.  But  for  this  as  its  ground, 
it  could  not  continue  reality.  The  more  real  the  world  may  ap- 
pear the  more  deeply  is  this  dependence  written  on  it.  In 
like  manner,  duality  testifies  to  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural. 
How  could  real  mind  and  real  matter  interact  and  together 
form  the  cosmos,  did  they  not  have  a  bond  and  controller  as 
real  as  they,  but  superior  to  them  and  so  supernatural?  Such 
also  is  the  witness  of  personality.  The  reality  of  the  finite  ego 
involves  the  Infinite  Ego.  As  the  human  spirit,  because  finite,, 
must  depend  on  something;  so  because  he  is  a  spirit  and  thus 
a  higher  reality  than  matter,  he  can  depend  only  on  another 
and  Infinite  or  Supernatural  Ego.  Hence,  we  observe  that, 
in  proportion  as  men  come  to  know  themselves,  does  their  con- 
sciousness of  the  Supernatural  develop.  Indeed,  self -conscious- 
ness cannot  be  true  and  not  develop  God-consciousness.  As 
Calvin  writes,  "  No  man  can  take  a  survey  of  himself  but  he 
must  immediately  turn  to  the  contemplation  of  God  in  whom  he 
'  lives  and  moves  '."  ^^  So,  too,  morality.  Its  objective  obli- 
gatory ideal,  its  law,  reveals  a  law  giver  and  moral  governor; 
and  in  the  fact  that  his  law  is  universal,  eternal,  and  immutable, 
we  see  that  he  himself  must  be  the  Absolute,  the  Supernatural. 
Thus  do  these  first  and  fundamental  facts  reveal  the  Super- 
natural. One  and  all,  they  involve  it  as  the  reality  of  realities. 
It  is  possible  to  object  that  all  this  is  only  subjective  delu- 
sion. We  may  affirm  with  J.  S.  Mill,  that  even  the  necessary 
principles  of  thought  have  no  necessary  validity;  that,  for  ex- 
ample, from  the  fact  that  two  and  two  make  four  in  this 
world  it  does  not  follow  that  they  do  so  in  any  other ;  and  that 
consequently,  the  necessity  to  thought  of  the  reality  of  the 
Supernatural  argues  nothing  as  to  its  actual  reality.  We  may 
hold  with  Maudsley,  that  the  individual  consciousness  is  un- 
trustworthy; that,  therefore,  though  Maudsley,  with  blessed 
inconsistency,  denied  this,  the  general  consciousness  of  the 
race  is  not  to  be  depended  on  [  and,  hence,  that  the  practically 
universal  consciousness  of  the  Supernatural  affords  no  real 
verification  of  our  necessary  belief  in  its  reality.     We  may 

'^Institutes,  i.  i. 


l8o  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

after  the  manner  of  Kant,  in  his  Critique  of  the  Pure  Reason, 
declare  that  we  see  things,  not  as  they  are,  but  as  our  minds 
project  themselves  into  them;  and  that  thus  we  discern  the 
Supernatural  as  implied  in  all  the  ultimate  verities,  only  be- 
cause of  what  we  are,  not  because  of  what  they  are.  All 
this  we  can  do.  But  is  it  rational  so  to  do?  This  is  the  ques- 
tion. Can  we  think  thus  and  not  commit  intellectual  suicide? 
That  is,  can  we  think  thus  and  thought  not  contradict  and  so 
destroy  itself?  If  its  necessary  principles,  if  its  deepest  con- 
sciousness, if  its  ultimate  verities,  are  al^to  be  set  aside,  it 
itself  must  be  utterly  discredited.  This  happening,  what  is 
left?  Not  the  external  world:  we  know  it  only  as  the  object 
of  thought.  Not  the  knowing  self :  we  know  it  only  as  it  re- 
veals itself  in  thought.  Not  even  the  certainty  that  we  do 
not  know  the  world  without  or  the  self  within :  to  know  even 
this  involves  the  trustworthiness  of  thought.  Thus  the  denial 
of  the  objective  reality  of  the  Supernatural  issues  in  and  so 
means  absolute  nescience  and  practical  nihilism.  In  a  word, 
as  H.  B.  Smith  says,  "  All  minds  believe  and  must 
believe  in  the  Supernatural,  unless  they  proclaim  all  Truth  and 
all  Being  to  be  a  mockery  and  a  delusion."  ^^  It  may  still  be 
replied  that  even  this  reductio  ad  absurdum  is  no  formal 
demonstration.  It  should,  however,  be  answered,  What  use 
for  a  demonstration  of  the  Supernatural  can  they  have  whose 
position  with  reference  to  the  Supernatural  gives  the  lie  to 
those  very  intellectual  processes  in  which  demonstration  con- 
sists. Moreover,  that  we  have  not  framed,  and  cannot  frame, 
a  formal  demonstration  of  the  objective  reality  of  the  Super- 
natural is  itself  confirmation  of  such  reality.  If  we  could 
ground  it  in  any  thing  deeper  and  so  prove  its  existence  strictly, 
we  should  only  prove  that  it  was  not  the  Supernatural  whose 
existence  we  had  proved.  From  its  very  nature  the  Super- 
natural must  be  incapable  of  formal  demonstration. 

"Apologetics,  p.  26, 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  i8l 


IV. 

The  Manifestation  of  the  Supernatural. 

The  question  is  not  whether  the  Supernatural  has  manifested 
itself  fully  nor  whether  it  could  so  manifest  itself.  As  the 
only  manifestation  with  which  we  are  concerned  is  to  us,  and 
thus  to  the  natural,  such  manifestation  of  the  Supernatural  as 
the  above  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  impossible  and 
even  inconceivable.  Because  infinite  and  absolute,  the  Super- 
natural cannot  but  be,  in  the  most  real  sense,  unknown  and  un- 
knowable. 

It  is  true  that  the  pantheists  dispute  this.  They  hold,  not 
only  that  the  Absolue  is  known,  but  that  knowledge  of  the  Ab- 
solute is  absolute  knowledge.  Their  postulates  are,  that  there 
is  one  Infinite  Substance  or  Absolute  Idea  of  which  all  rela- 
tive and  finite  phenomena  are  but  modifications;  that,  conse- 
quently, the  development  of  the  finite  and  relative  from  the 
Infinite  and  Absolute,  inasmuch  as  it  is  a  process  necessarily 
implied  in  and  resulting  from  the  very  nature  of  the  Infinite 
and  Absolute,  must  be  demonstrable;  and  that  thus  man,  be- 
cause himself  one  with  the  Infinite  and  Absolute,  and  identical 
in  his  own  consciousness  and  life  with  its  processes,  can  and 
does  know  it.  That  is,  since  man's  thinking  is  the  immediate 
activity  of  the  Supernatural,  his  knowledge  of  it  is  as  direct 
and  as  complete  as  it  is  of  himself.  In  knowing  the  latter  he 
really  knows  the  former.  We  have  seen,  however,  that  this 
position  is  contradicted  by  consciousness.  Its  deepest  and  most 
characteristic  testimony  is  to  the  individuality  of  the  self.  So 
far  from  identifying  it  with  the  Supernatural,  it  affirms  the 
sharpest  distinction  between  them.  Thus  we  cannot  take 
the  pantheistic  standpoint  and  not  invalidate  consciousness; 
but  consciousness  is  the  foundation  of  philosophy,  even  the 
basis  of  knowledge.  Still  further,  pantheism  exposes  weakness 
fatal  to  itself  in  the  claim  which  it  makes  and  must  make. 
This  claim  is  that  the  transition  from  the  Infinite  and  Abso- 
lute to  the  finite  and  relative,  from  the  Supernatural  to  the 


1 82  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

natural,  can  be  demonstrated  and  explained.  This  cannot 
be  done.  As  H.  B.  Smith  says,  "  The  real  problem — 
equally  a  problem  with  pantheist  and  theist — is  not  to  show  that 
the  one  includes  the  other,  but  rather  to  show  how  the  transi- 
tion must  or  may  be  made  from  the  one  to  the  other."  ^"^  On 
either  system  here  is  the  mystery.  Both  find  at  this  ix)int  a 
knot  that  cannot  be  untied.  The  difference  between  them  is 
that  theism  need  not  untie  it,  whereas  pantheism  must.  On  the 
one  hand,  theisrq  accounts  for  the  natural  as  the  creation  of 
the  Supernatural.  It  is  the  result  of  an  infinite  and  absolute 
self-conscious  Will.  The  method  of  this  will's  operation, 
however,  the  theist  is  not  obliged  to  set  forth.  He  need  only 
show,  as  he  can  show,  that  creation  is  possible  to  an  absolute 
will ;  and  he  may  grant  that  the  mode  of  creation  is  a  mystery 
necessarily  beyond  the  scrutiny  of  human  science.  We  our- 
selves so  often  make  what  is  other  than  we  are  that  we  should 
not  stumble  at  the  creation  of  the  natural  by  the  Supernatural. 
The  latter  act  is  one  whose  possibility  does  not  depend  on  its 
comprehension  by  us.  Nay,  it  is  one  that  could  not  be  the 
kind  of  act  that  it  must  be  were  it  comprehended  by  us.  On 
the  other  hand,  however,  pantheism  would  explain,  and  be- 
cause it  admits  but  one  substance,  must  explain,  the  natural 
as  an  emanation  from  or  an  outgoing  of,  the  Supernatural. 
That  is,  it  may  not,  as  we  have  just  seen  that  theism  may,  leave 
the  mode  of  transition  from  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  to  the 
finite  and  relative  a  mystery  :  but  it  is  obliged  to  explain  the 
transition  as  a  passing  of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  into  the 
finite  and  relative;  as  one  thing,  not  making,  but  itself 
becoming,  a  radically  different  thing.  Now  this  is  not  a  mys- 
tery; it  is  a  contradiction,  an  impossibility.  We  need  not, 
therefore,  and,  indeed,  may  not,  inquire  as  to  the  truth  of  the 
pantheistic  position,  that  a  knowledge  of  the  Absolute  is  abso- 
lute knowledge.  In  view  of  what  we  have  just  seen  that  this 
position  involves,  such  an  inquiry  becomes  irrational. 

The  question,  however,  is,  whether  the  Supernatural  has  so 
manifested  itself  that,  though  partially,  it  can  be  and  is  known 
by  us. 

"Apologetics,  p.  69, 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  183 

This  is  denied,  at  least  in  large  part,  by  the  school  of  Ritschl. 
In  general,  their  position  is  that  religious  knowledge  consists 
merely  of  value- judgments,  while  other  knowledge  consists  of 
existential  judgments.  That  is,  knowledge  in  religion  is  not 
the  recognition  of  what  is;  it  is  the  experience  of  what  is 
spiritually  helpful :  whereas  knowledge  elsewhere  is  real  knowl- 
edge because  composed  of  affirmations  ascertained  to  corres- 
pond to  actuality.  Hence,  this  school  claims  to  be  independ- 
ent of  philosophy  and  denies  the  legitimacy  of  natural  theology. 
Religion  is  wholly  an  affair  of  the  heart.  Science  is  wholly  a 
matter  of  the  head.  The  two  spheres  are  distinct  and  exclu- 
sive. As  Flint  says,  "  no  recognition  of  any  revelation  of  God 
is  granted  except  that  in  Scripture,  and  only  there  in  so  far  as 
there  is  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ.  Theology  is  repre- 
sented to  be  incapable  of  attaining  to  any  theoretic  knowledge 
of  God,  and  to  have  to  do  only  with  what  God  is  felt  to  be  in 
the  religious  experience  of  the  Christian.  That  is  to  say,  it  is 
described  as  having  for  its  task  to  set  forth  regarding  God, 
not  theoretical  but  practical  judgments, — not  affirmations 
which  really  apply  to  God  in  himself  but  affirmations  which  tell 
us  what  he  is  worth  to  us — that  is,  value- judgments,  which, 
although  they  in  no  way  express  what  God  really  is,  may  en- 
able us  to  overcome  the  evil  in  the  world  and  to  lead  a  Christian 
life."  ^^  Thus  this  position,  though  it  may  not  call  itself  agnos- 
ticism, is  such.  It  would  banish  knowledge  from  religion  and 
would  reduce  it  to  an  affair  of  feeling  only. 
It  may  be  refuted  on  the  following  grounds : 
I.  Its  pretension  to  independence  of  philosophy  and  its  con- 
sequent denial  of  natural  theology  are  inconsistent  in  the  ex- 
treme. It  is  on  nothing  but  an  unsound  philosophy  that  this 
pretension  bases  itself.  "  It  rests  wholly  on  agnosticism  as  to 
reason  and  on  the  Kantian  reduction  of  religion  to  a  mode  of 
representing  the  moral  ideal.  It  assumes  that  Kants'  philo- 
sophy as  modified  in  certain  respects  by  Lotze  is  the  basis  of 
theology."  This,  however,  is  an  enormous  assumption;  it  is 
an  assumption  wholly  in  the  sphere  of  philosophy;  and,  last 
but  not  least,  the  epistemology  assumed  is  wrong. 

'^  Agnosticism,  pp.  593.  594- 


1 84  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

2.  The  school  that  we  are  examining  proceeds  on  a  false 
psychology.  It  presupposes  that  what  are  called  man's  different 
natures  can  operate  in  independence  of  each  other.  Hence, 
the  religious  and  the  theoretic  spheres  can  be  kept  apart,  and 
so  a  doctrine  can  have  high  religious  value  even  though  it  have 
no  foundation  in  objective  fact.  The  truth,  however,  is  that 
man's  natures  do  not  operate  independently.  They  are  not 
even  separate  themselves.  Man's  spiritual  being  is  one  and 
indivisible.  It  does  not  have  even  different  powers.  Its  so- 
called  faculties  are  but  so  many  functions  of  one  power,  and 
these  functions  invariably  involve  each  other.  Intellect  and 
will,  for  example,  cannot  be  divorced,  and  thus  the  religious 
and  theoretic  spheres  cannot  be  exclusive.  That  they  could 
be,  man  would  have  to  be  other  than  he  is. 

3.  The  place  assigned  by  this  school  to  judgments  of  value 
is  destructive  of  their  value.  That  they  have  an  important 
place  in  religion  is  not  to  be  denied.  Religion  is  animated  by  a 
practical  motive.  It  does  prize  truth  according  to  its  effect 
on  the  heart.  Further,  religious  judgment  includes  an  element 
of  ethical  decision.  It  is  he  who  wills  to  do  the  will  of  God 
who  knows  the  doctrine.  Finally,  only  the  religious  man  can 
appreciate  spiritual  truth;  for  it  is  "spiritually  judged".  In 
these  ways  religious  judgment  does  differ  from  pure  intellect- 
ual or  theoretic  judgment,  as,  for  example,  in  geometrical 
demonstration.  The  element  of  value  does  enter  into  the  for- 
mer. In  a  true  sense  the  head  depends  on  the  heart.  '  No 
man  can  call  Jesus  Lord  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost.'  All  this, 
however,  implies  that  the  judgment  of  value  rests  on  a  theo- 
retic judgment;  and  not  vice  versa,  as  Kaftan  holds  and  as 
Ritschl  would  seem  to  mean.  The  spiritual  helpfulness  of  a 
doctrine  depends  on  its  truth ;  its  truth  is  not  proven  by  its  ap- 
parent helpfulness.  The  deity  of  Christ  is  a  precious  doctrine, 
because  it  is  the  interpretation  of  a  fact ;  and  it  would  lose  all 
its  preciousness,  if  his  body  were  still  lying  dead  in  a  Syrian 
grave. 

The  position  that  we  would  establish  as  to  the  manifestation 
of  the  Supernatural  is  denied  again  by  the  avowed  agnostics. 
They  admit,  and  many  of  them  strongly  insist  on,  the  objective 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  185 

reality  of  the  Supernatural ;  but  they  hold  yet  more  tenaciously 
that  it  is  unknown  and  even  that  it  must  be  unknowable.  For 
example,  Mansel,  though  he  believes  firmly  in  the  reality 
of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute,  denies  that  it  can  be  present  to 
us  in  consciousness;  Max  Miiller,  though  he  finds  the  princi- 
ple of  religion  in  the  consciousness  of  the  Infinite,  holds  that 
we  are  conscious  of  it  only  as  the  "  Beyond  ",  as  the  mere 
negative  of  the  finite,  and  so,  of  course,  that  we  cannot  know 
it;  and  Spencer,  though  he  claims  that  we  are  conscious  of  the 
Infinite  and  Absolute  as  the  positive  basis  of  all  our  conscious- 
ness of  the  finite  and  relative,  nevertheless,  insists  that  we  are 
conscious  of  this  positive  basis  as  without  limits  and  thus  as 
unknown  and  unknowable. 

This  theory  whose  chief  forms  in  its  distinctly  religious 
reference  have  just  been  indicated  is,  generally  speaking, 
exposed  to  the  following  objections : 

1.  It  proceeds  on  a  false  theory  of  the  nature  of  knowledge. 
This  is,  that  to  know  anything  we  must  know  it  in  its  essence 
and  be  able  to  define  it  itself.  This,  however,  cannot  be  a 
true  theory  of  knowledge.  If  it  were,  there  could  be  no  knowl- 
edge. Not  even  a  blade  of  grass  do  we  know  absolutely; 
that  is,  in  its  essence  and  apart  from  its  relations.  More- 
over, we  often  know  certainly  what  we  cannot  define  at  all. 
You  can  be  sure  of  your  friend's  handwriting,  though  you 
cannot  give  the  marks  by  which  it  is  distinguished  from  that  of 
others.  In  short,  knowledge  may  be  real,  though  it  is  neither 
absolute  nor  definite.  You  can  know  something,  though  you 
do  not  know  anything  fully  or  exactly. 

2.  The  denial  that  the  Supernatural  can  so  manifest  itself 
as  to  be  known  by  us  proceeds  on  a  false  theory  of  the  con- 
dition of  knowledge.  This  condition  is  the  identity  of  the  sub- 
ject knowing  with  the  object  known.  "  Quantum  sumus  sci- 
mus  "  and  "  Simile  simili  cognoscitur  ".  Hence,  to  know  the 
Supernatural,  we  must  be  ourselves  supernatural.  While,  how- 
ever, in  order  to  knowledge,  there  must  be  a  kinship  between 
subject  and  object,  this  is  far  from  being,  and,  indeed,  differs 
radically  from,  the  identity  claimed.  We  know  the  external 
world,  though  we  are  not  the  external  world.  Were  the  theory 
true,  self-knowledge  would  be  the  only  knowledge. 


1 86  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

3.  The  denial  that  we  are  considering  proceeds  on  a  false 
view  of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute.  It  is  regarded  as  the  all 
and  the  unrelated.  Hence,  as  to  know  is  to  distinguish  what 
is  known  from  other  things,  the  Infinite  cannot  be  known ;  for 
if  it  could  be  so  distinguished  from  other  things  as  to  be  known, 
or  even  from  the  knowing  self,  it  would  no  longer  be  the  In- 
finite that  was  known :  and  as  we  can  know  only  what  has  come 
into  relation  to  us  so  as  to  be  known,  it  would  no  more  be  the 
Absolute.  That  is,  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute,  as  regards 
the  capacity  for  being  known,  is  like  a  vas^  which  is  bound  to 
go  to  pieces  as  you  take  hold  of  it. 

As  we  saw,  however,  when  we  were  considering  just  what 
was  the  question  with  regard  to  the  reality  of  the  Supernatural, 
there  need  not  be,  there  is  not,  and  there  could  not  be,  any  such 
Infinite  and  Absolute  as  agnosticism  presupposes.  That  is,  the 
conception  of  the  Supernatural  on  which  it  is  founded  is  con- 
tradictory. Nor  is  this  all.  As  should  now  be  evident  and  as 
Flint  has  taught  us  in  his  classic  work  on  Agnosticism,  agnosti- 
cism as  to  the  Supernatural  must,  unless  inconsistent,  become 
agnosticism  as  to  everything  ;  and  agnosticism  as  to  every- 
thing, whether  in  the  form  of  doubt  or  of  disbelief,  involves  a 
fatal  contradiction.  In  a  word,  together  or  singly,  these 
objections  are  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  agnostic  position ; 
and  thus,  though  they  do  not  prove  the  reality  of  the  mani- 
festation of  the  Supernatural  and  of  our  knowledge  of  it,  they 
do  open  the  way  for  the  following  proof  : 

1.  There  is  no  a  priori  impossibility  that  the  Supernatural 
should  manifest  itself  and  should  be  known  as  manifested. 
Admitting  that  only  its  bare  existence  has  been  established, 
it  does  not  follow  that  no  more  can  be  established.  Nay,  that 
a  thing  is  often  raises  a  presumption  or  expectation  that  what 
it  is  will  appear.  This  presumption  or  expectation  is  attested 
by  the  spirit  of  discovery  which  it  produces.  Nor  may  it  be 
urged  that  all  this  applies  only  to  the  sphere  of  the  natural. 
That  is  to  beg  the  question.  It  is  to  assert  the  thing  to  be 
established. 

2.  The  reality  of  the  Supernatural  cannot  be  known  and 
its  nature  not  be  known  also  to  some  degree  at  the  same  time. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  187 

There  is  not  anything  the  existence  of  which  can  be  appre- 
hended without  an  idea  of  at  least  some  of  its  quahties.  It 
is  by  means  of  the  acts  or  the  noises  or  the  pecuHarities  in 
appearance  of  a  strange  beast  that  men  in  the  first  instance 
become  aware  of  its  existence,  and  there  is  no  other  way  in 
which  they  can  be  assured  of  it.  Knowledge  that  it  is  in- 
volves by  a  necessary  law  of  thought  some  knowledge  of  what 
it  is;  and  to  this  extent  the  establishment  of  its  reality  estab- 
lishes also  that  it  has,  in  so  far  forth,  manifested  itself  and  this 
manifestation  been  recognized.  It  cannot  be  otherwise  in  the 
case  of  the  Supernatural.  Because  the  law  just  referred  to  is 
a  necessary  law  of  thought  as  such,  if  we  know  the  reality  of 
the  Supernatural,  we  know  that  to  some  degree  it  has  mani- 
fested itself,  and  been  recognized.  We  cannot  know  that  it 
exists  and  not  know  something  of  what  it  is.  Thus  the  mere 
question  whether  the  Supernatural  can  manifest  itself  implies 
that  it  has  done  so  sufficiently  to  be  apprehended.  But  this 
raises  the  presumption  at  once,  and  it  is  from  this  presumption 
that  our  inquiry  should  proceed,  the  presumption  that  this 
manifestation  of  the  Supernatural  and  the  consequent  recog- 
nition of  it  by  us  will  keep  on.  Other  things  being  equal,  the 
antecedent  likelihood  is  that  what  has  been  going  on  will  con- 
tinue. 

3.  In  knowing  the  existence  of  the  Supernatural  we  know  it 
as  that  whose  nature  it  is  to  manifest  itself.  For  example,  as 
we  have  seen,  we  know  the  Supernatural  as  Infinite  Being 
and  so  as  the  ground  of  all  finite  being.  Now  it  is  not  claimed 
that  the  former  simply  as  being  tends  to  manifest  itself  in  the 
latter.  In  order  to  this,  there  must  be,  in  addition  to  Infinite 
Being,  a  principle  of  movement,  an  act.  Still,  Infinite  Being 
looks  toward  finite  being,  and  thus  toward  manifestation  in 
it,  so  far  as  this,  that  it  can  be  the  ground  and  condition 
of  it.  Again,  as  we  have  also  seen,  we  know  the  Supernatural 
as  the  First  Cause.  It  is  not  only  Infinite  Being.  It  is  also  a 
principle  of  movement ;  it  has  the  power  to  act,  to  create.  Now 
we  do  not  hold  that  the  First  Cause  must  produce  an  effect 
and  so  manifest  itself  in  it.  The  First  Cause  need  not  be, 
as  we  might  show  that  it  could  not  be,  one  that  acts  neces- 


i88  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

sarily.  Yet,  when  there  is  nothing  to  the  contrary,  the  pre- 
sumption in  the  case  of  power  is  that  it  will  exert  and  so  mani- 
fest itself.  Indeed,  ordinarily,  the  power  of  self -manifestation 
implies  a  tendency  toward  it.  Once  more,  as  we  have  seen, 
too,  we  know  the  Supernatural  as  the  Infinite  Agent  of  the 
infinite  acts  that  the  universe,  because  finite,  presupposes  and 
thus  itself  evidences  ;  namely,  creation,  preservation  and  gov- 
ernment. It  must  be,  then,  that  in  these  acts,  and  so  in  their 
results,  the  Supernatural  itself  is  really  manifested.  It  is  as 
impossible  that  an  agent  should  not  express  himself  in  his  acts 
as  that  these  should  not  involve  an  agent.  They  are  the  agent 
himself  in  exercise.  In  simply  knowing  the  existence  of  the 
Supernatural,  then,  we  know  it  as  that  whose  very  nature  it  is 
to  manifest  itself.  In  the  Supernatural  as  Infinite  Being  we 
have  the  necessary  ground  of  the  finite  and  to  this  extent  the 
possibility  of  its  manifestation  in  it.  In  the  Supernatural  as  the 
First  Cause  we  have  the  power  of  self -manifestation  and  in  so 
far  forth  a  tendency  toward  it.  In  the  Supernatural  as  the 
Infinite  Agent  of  the  infinite  acts  that  the  finite  universe 
implies,  we  have  the  actual  manifestation  of  the  Supernatural 
itself. 

4.  The  same  result  may  be  reached,  and  just  as  conclusively, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  natural  and  phenomenal.  This 
is  the  effect  of  the  Supernatural.  As  we  have  already  shown, 
we  cannot  really  think  otherwise,  and  it  cannot  be  otherwise. 
See,  however,  what  this  law  of  cause  and  effect  involves.  The 
existence  of  the  universe  as  an  effect  not  only  demands  the  ex- 
istence of  the  Supernatural  as  its  cause;  but  inasmuch  as  a 
cause  must  express  itself  more  or  less  in  its  effect,  it  implies 
that  the  universe,  though  a  partial,  cannot  but  be  a  real  mani- 
festation of  the  Supernatural.  In  the  natural,  therefore,  the 
Supernatural  must  appear  and,  in  so  far  forth,  must  be  known 
by  us.  We  could  no  more  avoid  this  than  we  could  avoid 
seeing  and  knowing  the  artist  in  his  work.  This  is  true  on  any 
rational  theory  of  the  universe.  Both  the  possibility  and  the 
fact  of  such  a  manifestation  of  the  Supernatural  must  be 
conceded  by  all  who  hold  to  evolution  as  much  as  by  those 
who  believe  in  creation.     Evolution — of  what?    Evolution  in 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  189 

the  abstract  is  only  a  name  for  a  possibility,  a  term  descriptive 
of  a  process.  There  must  be  a  Supernatural  Something,  an 
Absolute  Reality;  if  the  possibility  named  is  to  become  actual- 
ity, if  the  process  conceived  is  to  operate.  Darwin  demands 
living  germ  cells  if  he  is  to  work  his  development  hypothesis. 
Huxley  dispenses  with  life,  but  cannot  get  along  without  pro- 
toplasm. Lucretius  does  not  require  this,  but  even  he  must 
have  atoms.  Whence,  however,  the  atom?  Science  says  that 
it  is  evidently  "  a  manufactured  article."  It,  therefore,  be- 
cause an  effect  must  be  a  manifestation  of  its  cause.  Whence 
protoplasm  with  its  assumed  power  of  generating  life?  Yet 
more,  as  being  a  more  pregnant  effect,  must  this  be  a  more 
pregnant  manifestation  of  its  cause.  Whence  life  ?  This  is  the 
highest  and  richest  of  all.  Must  not,  then,  its  successive  evo- 
lutions be  a  continuous  as  well  as  the  fullest  manifestation 
thus  far  considered  of  the  First  Cause  and  so  of  the  Super- 
natural? As  H.  B.  Smith  says,  "This  cuts  the  roots 
of  the  theory  that  the  Supernatural  is  simply  something  in 
itself  inscrutable,  remote,  isolated — an  unintelligible  abstrac- 
tion— for  we  have  obtained  not  only  the  Supernatural  itself,  as 
a  datum  of  reason  and  philosophy,  but  also  the  Supernatural 
manifested,  as  necessary  to  any  evolution,  development,  prog- 
ress, or  construction  of  a  universal  system."  ^^  That  is,  the 
manifestation  of  the  Supernatural  in  nature  and  our  conse- 
quent knowledge  of  it  is  as  much  a  necessity  of  thought  and 
so  as  truly  a  reality  as  we  have  seen  to  be  its  objective  existence. 
*  The  heavens  must  declare  its  glory  '.  '  The  firmament  must 
show  its  handiwork  '.  'Its  everlasting  power  and  divinity 
must  be  understood  from  the  things  that  are  made  '.  '  The 
spirit  of  man  must  be  the  candle  of  the  Lord  '.  '  Christians 
must  be  epistles  of  Christ  known  and  read  of  all  men  '.  '  The 
church  must  make  known  the  manifold  wisdom  of  God.'  '  The 
angels,  since  they  are  his  ministers,  must  reveal  his  will.'  In 
a  word,  all  nature,  both  spiritual  and  physical,  must  manifest 
the  Supernatural ;  and  in  all  the  universe  we  should  discern  the 
manifestation.  In  this  nature  finds  the  sufficient  reason  for  its 
being,  the  ultimate  condition  of  its  existence.    Throughout,  as 

^Apologetics,  p.  41. 


ipo 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


regards  both  its  origination  and  its  continuance,  the  workman- 
ship of  the  Supernatural,  it  could  not  be  otherwise.  What, 
then,  does  nature  show  the  Supernatural  to  be  ? 


The  Personality  of  the  Supernatural. 

In  affirming  this  we  deny,  on  the  one  hand,  the  rude  and 
antisupernaturalistic  materialism  of  Lucretius,  which  would 
account  for  all  things  by  means  of  atoms  and  motion ;  modern 
materialism,  which  for  atoms  and  motion  would  substitute 
physical  force;  idealistic  materialism  or  monism,  as  that  of 
Tyndall,  Huxley  and  Mill,  which  in  place  of  matter  and  force 
would  put  an  inscrutable  mode  of  being  whence  they  both 
come ;  East  Indian  pantheism,  which  regards  the  Supernatural 
as  spirit  abstract  and  undefined ;  materialistic  pantheism,  as  that 
of  Spinoza,  whose  Supernatural  is  the  absolute  substance; 
idealistic  pantheism,  as  that  of  Hegel,  which  would  conceive  the 
Supernatural  as  thought,  with  logical  law,  and  as  developing 
by  logical  law  the  universe;  the  theory  of  the  pessimistic  phil- 
osophy of  Schopenhauer,  that  the  basis  and  cause  of  the  uni- 
verse is  unconscious  will :  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  position 
of  the  "  cosmic  philosophy  "  of  Spencer  and  Fiske,  that  the 
Supernatural  is  "  superpersonal  " ;  that  is,  it  is  infinitely  higher 
than  personal,  and  so  is  unknown  and  must  be  unknowable. 
In  opposition  to  all  these  views,  on  the  criticism  of  which  our 
limits  forbid  us  to  enter,  we  hold  that  the  Supernatural  is  an 
identical,  self-conscious,  self -determining  being;  such  as  we 
are,  a  person,  only  infinite  and  absolute  and  unconditioned. 
This  we  would  vindicate  as   follows: 

I.  The  Supernatural  can  be  personal.  This  is  denied  by 
many,  notably  by  Spinoza  and  by  Fichte  in  his  earlier  teaching, 
on  the  ground  that  personality  is  necessarily  relative.  The  es- 
sence of  it,  it  is  said,  is  that  it  implies  another  outside  of  itself. 
Hence,  the  Supernatural,  because  the  Absolute,  cannot  be 
personal.  The  condition  of  absoluteness  is  freedom  from  con- 
ditions of  every  kind.  This  position,  however,  confounds 
personality  with  individuality.     The  latter  is  a  mere  relation. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  191 

It  consists  in  separation  from  other  things.  It  could  not 
be  if  there  were  not  other  things.  That  is,  its  existence  depends 
on  its  relation  to  other  things.  But  personality  is  not  a  mere 
relation.  As  says  H.  B.  Smith,  ''  It  is  a  point  of  fixed 
being. "^^  Its  essence  is,  not  that  it  is  marked  off  from  other 
persons  or  things;  for  were  this  so,  beasts  would  be  persons. 
Its  essence  is  self-consciousness  and  self-determination;  for  it 
is  this  internal  distinguishing  of  the  self  as  object  from  the 
self  as  subject,  not  any  relation  to  other  selves,  or  things,  that 
constitutes  personality.  The  objection,  therefore,  falls.  Nec- 
essary relativity  is  inconsistent  with  the  Absolute,  but  person- 
ality as  such  is  entirely  self-dependent  and  so  altogether  inde- 
pendent. As  it  appears  in  us  it  is  relative.  This  relativity, 
however,  is  the  result  of  our  finiteness.  We  are  persons,  not 
because  of  it,  but  in  spite  of  it.  Indeed,  the  perfection  of  per- 
sonality is  possible  only  in  the  case  of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute. 
Nor  may  it  be  replied,  that,  though  self -consciousness  and 
self-determination  do  not  involve  any  external  relativity,  they 
are  determinations;  that,  according  to  the  Spinozan  maxim, 
"  every  determination  is  a  negation ;  "  and  that  on  this  ground, 
consequently,  if  on  no  other,  the  Supernatural  or  the  Infinite 
and  Absolute  cannot  be  personal.  This  is  to  confound  the  laws 
of  being  with  those  of  thought.  That  all  determination  or 
definition  limits  is  true  of  mathematical  quantities  and  of  logi- 
cal general  notions,  but  it  is  not  true  of  concrete  beings.  To 
hold  that  even  Spinoza  meant  this  is  to  misconceive  him.  As 
to  beings,  the  opposite  is  true.  As  Harris  says,  "  The  more 
determined  or  specific  a  being  is  by  the  increase  or  multipli- 
cation of  its  powers,  the  greater  and  not  the  less  or  more 
limited,  is  the  being."  ^^  Indeed,  being  without  any  determina- 
tions and  specifications  becomes  an  abstraction.  We  can  con- 
ceive of  it  as  real,  and  so  as  being  rather  than  thought,  only 
as  we  conceive  of  it  as  constituted  in  this  way  or  in  that.  Thus 
do  the  laws  of  thought  itself  themselves  witness  to  the  differ- 
ence between  themselves  and  the  laws  of  being.  Hence,  as  we 
have  all  along  insisted  that  we  must  do,  we  can  be  true  to  the 

'^Introduction  to  Christian  Theology,  p.  97. 
^  The  Philosophical  Basis  of  Theism,  p.  29. 


192 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


necessity  in  the  former  only  as  we  recognize  this  difference. 
Indeed,  as  Lindsay  puts  it,  "  It  is  precisely  in  denying  the 
Supernatural  the  power  of  being  personal  that  his  infinitude  is 
parted  with.  This  self-limitation  of  the  Infinite — the  great 
renunciation — is  yet  really  its  self-assertion  and  its  self-revela- 
tion.""^ Evidently,  therefore,  the  Supernatural  can  be  per- 
sonal: at  least  without  some  such  determination  as  that  of 
personality  the  Sui>ernatural  could  not  be. 

2.  As  there  must  be  a  real  Supernatural,  so  he  must  be  at 
least  personal,    ^hree  considerations  will  "evince  this  clearly: 

As  much  as  this  is  involved  in  the  nature  of  a  first-cause. 
Whatever  the  Supernatural  may  not  be,  it  is,  as  we  have  ob- 
served, of  his  essence  that  He  should  be  the  First-Cause.  It  is 
not  more  certain  that  there  must  be  such  a  cause  than  it  is  cer- 
tain that  this  cause  cannot  but  be  supernatural.  "  Now  we 
have  a  real,  though  limited,  experience  of  such  a  cause  within 
ourselves,  and  there  alone."  We  are  conscious  of  being  able 
to  originate  action,  to  initiate  events,  even  in  a  measure  to  mod- 
ify the  processes  of  nature,  in  virtue  of  our  free  will  or  power 
of  self-determination.  That  is,  the  only  finite  first-cause,  if 
we  may  so  speak,  known  to  us  is  found  to  be  such  because  of  its 
personality.  Its  personality  is  what  makes  it,  in  spite  of  its 
limitations,  a  kind  of  first-cause.  Would  it,  then,  be  other- 
wise were  all  restrictions  to  be  removed?  Nay,  could  it  be  so? 
It  is  of  the  essence  of  a  first-cause  that  it  should  be  personal. 
It  could  not  originate  action  were  it  not  self -determining. 
Unless,  then,  it  continue  such,  it  must  cease  to  be  a  first-cause. 
And  this  will  be  true  whether  it  be  finite  and  natural  or  infinite 
and  supernatural.  The  only  difference  between  the  two  cases 
will  be,  not  that  in  the  latter  it  will  not  be  personal,  but  that 
it  will  be  the  perfection  of  personality.  This  is  so  because  even 
the  transition  from  finite  to  infinite,  while  it  must  involve  the 
perfection  of  what  is  under  consideration,  cannot  change  its 
essence  and  not  destroy  it  itself.  Hence,  unless  the  Super- 
natural is  to  cease  to  be  the  First  Cause,  he  must  be  at  least 
a  person  as  we  are. 

This   follows  as  surely  from  the  law  of  "  causal  resem- 

"  Recent  Advances  in  the  Theistic  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  315. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  193 

blance  ".  The  gist  of  this  law  is  that  nothing  can  be  in  the 
effect  which  is  not  potentially  in  the  cause;  or  that  the  cause 
must  always  be,  in  its  nature  and  possibilities,  superior  to  its 
effect.  Thus,  while  we  can  believe  that  a  man  has  made  a 
machine,  we  could  not  believe  that  any  mere  machine  could 
make  a  man.  In  the  former  case  the  cause  would  transcend 
the  effect.  In  the  latter  the  cause  would  fall  below  the  effect, 
and  for  this  reason  would  appear  to  be  and  would  be  impos- 
sible as  its  cause.  Now  the  universe  contains  the  personal. 
The  personal  or  man  is  that  in  it  which  is  highest.  It  is  that 
toward  the  development  of  which  all  tends.  In  short,  the  per- 
sonal is  both  the  crown  and  the  goal  of  the  world  considered 
by  itself.  As  the  evolutionists  say,  '  the  personal  is  the  meaning 
of  the  whole  process  of  evolution.'  How,  then,  can  the  First- 
Cause  of  the  world,  the  originator,  sustainer  and  director  even 
of  evolution  itself,  be  himself  less  than  personal?  As  the  in- 
spired psalmist  says,  "  He  that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not 
hear?  "  "  He  that  formed  the  eye,  shall  he  not  see?  "  (Psalm 
xciv.  9)  ;  so  consistent  thought  must  decide  that  the  source  of 
that  self -consciousness  and  self-determination  in  which  creation 
culminates  cannot  himself  be  less  than  personal.  If  he  were, 
the  law  of  causal  resemblance,  elsewhere  universally  true, 
would  break  down  precisely  where,  unless  the  world  were  a 
chaos,  it  should  hold  most  strictly. 

The  law  of  universal  development  just  referred  to  necessi- 
tates the  same  conclusion.  In  the  words  of  Lindsay,  "  Do  we 
not  see  the  creation  struggling  toward  personality,  and  mount- 
ing step  by  step  through  the  preliminary  stages  of  the  vegetable 
and  animal  world,  until  in  man  it  actually  attains  to  individ- 
ual personality,  and  becomes  a  self-conscious  mind?  Whence 
this  universal  tendency  of  all  that  lives  toward  personality, 
if  it  be  not  the  law  of  the  world;  and  whence  this  law,  if  the 
Principle  of  the  world  is  an  impersonal  one?  And  if  person- 
ality constitutes  the  preeminence  of  man  over  the  inferior  cre- 
ation, can  this  preeminence  be  wanting  in  the  highest  Being  of 
all?  Can  God,  the  most  perfect  Being  imaginable,  be  devoid 
of  personality  the  most  perfect  form  of  being?  "^^     May  it 

'^^  Recent  Advances  in  the  Theistic  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  329. 


I 


194 


THE  SUPERNATURAL 


not  be,  however,  it  is  replied,  that  the  Supernatural  is  superper- 
sonal?    Hence,  it  should  be  observed,  that, 

3.  The  Supernatural,  though  he  must  be  at  least  personal, 
cannot  be  higher  than  personal.  This  does  not  mean  that  man 
is  the  measure  of  the  Supernatural.  Because  infinite  and  abso- 
lute, as  we  have  already  seen,  the  Supernatural  must  always 
be  unknown  and  unknowable  to  even  the  highest  form  of  the 
natural.  Spinoza  himself,  though  holding  that  the  infinite 
Substance  has  infinite  modes,  teaches  that  we  know  but  two 
of  them,  thought  and  extension.  Even  with  respect  to  the  es- 
sentials of  personality  the  Supernatural  Person  must  be  in- 
finitely higher  than  ourselves  and  so  quite  different  from  us. 
What  self -consciousness  is  that  has  absolutely  no  limitations, 
what  self-determination  is  that  has  absolutely  no  restrictions, 
we  cannot  imagine  and  we  never  shall  be  able  to  imagine.  To 
the  natural,  even  in  the  respects  in  which  they  are  most  akin, 
the  Supernatural  is  the  eternal  as  well  as  the  supreme  mystery. 
The  very  love  of  Christ,  for  example,  "  passes  knowledge  ". 
That  the  Supernatural  cannot  be  higher  than  personal,  how- 
ever, does  mean,  on  the  one  hand,  that  he  cannot  be  higher  in 
the  sense  of  less  determinate.  The  reason  is  that  in  the  case 
of  being,  as  we  have  already  observed,  highness  is  directly 
proportional  to  determinateness.  Absurdity  is  inherent  in  the 
position  of  those  thinkers  who,  as  Spencer  and  Fiske,  in  postu- 
lating that  the  Supernatural,  though  personally  non-existent, 
may  yet  be  higher  than  personality,  as  Lindsay  says,  "  place 
being  plus  intelligence  below  that  which  has  it  not,  and  who, 
in  spite  of  the  self -evidencing  power  of  the  theistic  idea, 
assign  that  which  is  self-conscious  and  self-determining  to  a 
lower  platform  than  that  which  blindly  moves  on  to  its  end."  ^* 
In  a  word,  the  Supernatural  cannot  be  supernatural  in  the  sense 
of  impersonal,  because  the  supernatural  in  this  sense  is  really 
the  sub-personal. 

Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  the  Supernatural  be  more  deter- 
minate than  personal,  and  so,  in  this  way,  if  not  in  that  just 
noticed,  be  superpersonal.  Personality  is  of  all  possible  modes 
of  existence  the  highest.     It  is  not  simply  the  highest  known 

**  Recent  Advances  in  the  Theistic  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  271. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  195 

to  us,  it  is  not  merely  the  highest  of  which  we  can  conceive ;  it 
reveals  itself  as  finished,  perfect,  ultimate.  It  seems  to  say,  not 
only  has  development  never  been  traced  beyond  me,  but  devel- 
opment ends,  and  must  end,  with  me.  There  may  be  higher 
and  lower  kinds  of  personality,  but  no  other  mode  of  being  can 
be  so  high  as  personality.  If  the  ground  of  this  assertion  be 
demanded,  the  one  but  the  sufficient  answer  is  that  it  is  an  ulti- 
mate truth.  Just  as  in  the  sphere  of  thought  reason  reveals, 
itself  as  alone  because  ultimate,  so  that  we  are  sure  that  in 
thought  there  is  not  and  could  not  be  anything  higher  than 
reason;  so  in  the  sphere  of  being  personality  reveals  itself  as 
alone  because  ultimate,  so  that  we  are  sure  that  in  being  there 
is  not  and  could  not  be  anything  higher  than  personality.  In 
self-consciousness  and  self-determination,  that  is,  in  person- 
ality, we  meet  determination  which  is  as  evidently  ultimate  as 
it  is  self-evident.  Even  the  evolutionists  would  seem  at  least 
to  have  felt  this.  If  not,  why  does  Fiske  say  that  the  moral 
sense  in  which  the  reality  of  personality  comes  out  most  clear- 
ly— the  moral  sense  is  "  the  last  and  noblest  product  of  evo- 
lution which  we  can  ever  know."  ^^  Thus  the  existence  of  the 
Supernatural  and  his  manifestation  in  and  through  the  universe 
of  which  he  is  the  creator  and  preserver  and  governor  are 
not  more  truly  necessities  of  thought  and  so  realities  than  is 
his  personality.  Not  to  admit  this  is  to  give  the  lie  to  our  own 
personality,  and,  consequently,  to  all  else;  for  it  is  in  our  in- 
tense consciousness  of  our  own  personality  that  the  conception 
and  conviction  of  reality  arise.  In  a  word,  if  there  be  reality, 
we  must  be  real;  if  we  are  real,  the  Supernatural  whom  we 
presuppose  must  be  so;  if  the  Supernatural  exists,  as  he  cannot 
be  less  than  self-conscious  and  self -determining,  so  he  cannot 
be  more.  Such,  that  is,  personal  being  is  the  apex  and  the 
foundation  of  all  being.  This  is  the  last  and  highest  testimony 
of  our  own  personality,  the  most  evidently  real  of  all  realities, 

*®  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  Vol  ii.  p.  324. 


196  THE  SUPERNATURAL 


VI. 

The    Personal    or    Immediate    Manifestation    of   the 
Supernatural. 

By  this  we  mean,  such  a  manifestation  as  would  be  such  a 
direct  communication  from  the  Supernatural  as  it  is  claimed 
that  the  Decalogue  is ;  such  supernatural  works  as  the  miracles, 
if  they  were  wro\ight,  must  have  been;  such  a  supernatural  act 
as  regeneration,  if  it  be  a  real  act,  evidently  is;  such  a  super- 
natural person  as  Christ  could  not  but  have  been,  if  he  was,  as 
he  said,  both  "  the  Son  of  God  "  and  "  the  Son  of  man."  The 
characteristic  of  these  manifestations  of  the  Supernatural  is 
not  that  they  are  more  truly  personal  than  is  his  manifesta- 
tion of  himself  in  and  through  the  universe.  No  matter  how 
many  instruments  a  person  may  use,  his  action  is  always 
personal.  No  matter  how  numerous  may  be  the  media 
in  and  through  which  he  reveals  himself,  his  revelation  is 
always  personal.  In  the  cases  under  consideration,  however, 
no  instruments  are  employed,  no  media  intervene.  God  him- 
self spoke  and  wrote  the  words  of  the  Decalogue;  God  with 
his  own  arm,  as  it  were,  wrought  the  miracles ;  God  by  his  own 
power  alone  quickens  into  newness  of  life  the  soul  "  dead 
through  trespasses  and  sins ;"  Christ  is  "  the  image  of  the 
invisible  God  ",  he  reveals  him  by  himself  becoming  "  God 
manifest  in  the  flesh."  Such  supernatural  acts  as  these,  then, 
are  not  simply  truly  personal ;  they  are  only  personal :  indeed, 
they  appear  conspicuously  supernatural  just  because  they  are 
only  personal;  though  they  occur  in  nature,  and  though  they 
need  not  and  should  not  be  conceived  as  violating  or  even  as 
suspending  any  law  of  nature,  they  are  so  evidently  not  at  all 
of  nature,  they  are  so  manifestly  due  wholly  to  wisdom  and 
power  independent  of  it  and  superior  to  it,  that  they  must  pro- 
ceed from  the  Supernatural  Person  alone.  If  they  took  place, 
they  cannot  but  be  interventions  of  his  in  the  ordinary  course 
of  nature.  Could  they,  then,  take  place?  This  is  the  question 
of  questions  to  the  Christian.  If  they  could  not,  Christianity  is 
a  lie.     Its  most  positive  and  characteristic  claim  is  that  it  is 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  197 

based  on  the  direct  personal  intervention  of  the  Supernatural 
in  the  history  of  the  race,  in  the  development  of  the  universe. 
As  we  saw  when  considering  the  importance  of  a  true  doctrine 
of  the  Supernatural,  the  New  Testament  cannot  be  honestly 
interpreted  and  yield  any  other  teaching  than  this. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  question  just  raised  is  even  more 
fundamental.  Not  only  Christianity,  but  all  higher  religion  is 
at  stake.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  the  immediate  knowledge 
of  God  as  the  supernatural  Person  is  involved  in  the  very  con- 
ception of  religion  as  based  on  the  self -revelation  of  a  personal 
God.  The  operatives  in  a  factory  may  sustain  a  real  and  a 
conscious  relation  to  the  manager  of  it,  though  he  never  comes 
among  them  or  speaks  to  them  or  interposes  in  the  direction 
of  affairs.  He  may  have  revealed  himself  so  clearly  in  the 
plan  of  the  factory,  in  sustaining  it  in  operation,  and  in  the 
orders  of  the  foreman  whom  he  has  placed  over  it,  that  all  in  it 
can  and,  if  rightly  disposed,  will,  discern  his  wisdom  and  ac- 
knowledge his  power  and  respect  his  authority.  It  will  not, 
however,  be  nearly  so  natural  and  easy  for  them  to  do  this 
as  it  would  be  if  the  manager  came  daily  among  his  people 
and  listened  to  them  and  himself  personally  took  part  in  the 
control  of  the  work;  and  if  his  people  are  not  rightly  disposed 
toward  him,  it  is  certain  that  they  will  not  recognize  him  as 
they  should,  if  there  is  no  personal  intervention  on  his  part. 
They  will  lose  sight  of  him  himself  in  the  machinery  which  he 
has  designed  and  is  operating. 

Just  so,  there  might  be  true  religion,  did  we  know  of  God 
only  what  is  clearly  seen  from  "  the  things  that  are  made." 
That  "  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  in  him  "  ought  to 
dispose  us  to  "  acknowledge  him  in  all  our  ways  ",  and  the 
*  earth  is  so  full  of  the  goodness  of  the  Lord '  that  it  would 
seem  that  we  could  not  help  loving  him.  All  this,  however, 
though  true  religion,  would  be  only  an  undeveloped  form  of  it. 
It  is  a  form,  too,  which,  it  is  certain,  would  not  be  attained  by 
a  sinful  race.  As  already  implied,  not  liking  to  retain  God  in 
their  knowledge,'  they  would  look  only  at  his  works,  and  so 
these  works  would  in  time  even  hide  him  himself  from  them. 
In  order,  therefore,  to  the  higher  exercises  of  religion  and  to 


I 


198  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

any  true  exercise  of  it  in  the  case  of  sinners,  we  need  to  feel, 
that  God  himself  is  in  the  midst  of  us;  that  he  not  only  acts 
through  the  laws  of  nature,  but  independently  of  them;  and 
that  he  can  and,  on  occasion,  does,  put  out  his  own  hand  and 
solely  by  his  own  personal  power  effect  what  the  forces  of 
nature  though  under  his  direction  could  not  do  and  what  may 
even  seem  to  set  them  aside.  In  a  word,  as  things  are,  in 
order  to  the  development  of  religion,  we  must  not  only  recog- 
nize the  Supernatural  as  the  personal  God,  but  we  must  rec- 
ognize him  also  as  only  personal  or  as  simply  personal ;  that  is, 
as  one  who,  in  addition  to  presiding  over  nature  and  working 
through  it,  can  and  does  also  manifest  himself  by  interposing 
personally  in  it  and  by  operating  independently  of  it,  though 
on  it  and  in  it.  Only  thus  can  we  appreciate  sufficiently  the 
reality  because  the  personality  of  God's  revelation  to  us. 

Even  the  impression  of  the  Supernatural  made  in  the  crea- 
tion, if  it  is  to  abide,  needs  to  be  deepened  by  supernatural 
interventions  in  history.  Unbelief  should  not,  but  does,  con- 
clude that,  if  the  Supernatural  manifested  himself  immediately 
and  so  simply  personally  only  at  the  beginning,  he  does  not 
manifest  himself  as  a  person  at  all,  and  so  did  not  even  then. 
This  is  substantially  the  position  of  the  whole  modern  ration- 
alistic school.  Not  less  truly  do  belief  in  a  personal  God  and 
in  supernatural  interventions  stand  or  fall  together  than  belief 
in  a  true  creation  and  in  supernatural  interventions  stand  or 
fall  together.  As  there  can  not  be  true  religion  save  as  we 
believe  that  God  himself  has  spoken  to  us,  so  we  shall  not 
long  or  truly  believe  thus  save  as  we  hold  to  an  immediate 
knowledge  of  God  as  only  or  simply  personal. 

The  ultimate  reason  for  this  is  that  the  self -revelation  of  a 
personal  God  cannot  be  authenticated  sufficiently  as  such,  un- 
less it  be  accompained  by  supernatural  interventions.  An  effect, 
reason  dictates,  can  be  assigned  to  a  particular  cause  only  as 
it  reproduces  what  is  distinctive  of  that  cause.  Hence,  the 
necessary  inference  is  that  if  the  Supernatural  Person  reveals 
himself,  the  revelation  will  be,  at  any  rate,  at  times,  both  above 
nature  and  in  contrast  with,  if  not  in  opposition  to,  nature* 
Accordingly,  were  such  a  revelation  to  be  throughout  natural, 
though,  as  we  have  seen,  necessarily  presupposing  and  thus 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  199 

indirectly  revealing  the  Supernatural,  reason  would  hesitate 
to  recognize  it  as  really  supernatural.  Though  it  would  be 
such,  it  could  not  be  certainly  discriminated  as  such.  Even 
the  cry  of  a  man  would  seldom  be  mistaken  for  that  of  a 
beast :  it  always  has  a  human  quality.  Nevertheless,  it  is  only 
as  it  utters  itself  in  speech  that  we  can  be  altogether  sure  that 
it  is  a  man  whom  we  hear.  Just  so,  the  supernatural  Person 
can,  and  ordinarily  does,  confine  his  manifestations  within 
natural  instrumentalities;  but  it  is  only  as  he  breaks  away 
from  these  and  reveals  himself  both  in  contrast  with  nature 
and  above  it,  that  is,  as  only  the  supernatural  Person  could — 
that  his  revelation  as  a  whole  can  be  authenticated  absolutely 
as  being  what  it  really  is.  Thus  belief  in  the  personal  inter- 
vention in  nature,  and  so  above  and  in  contrast  with  it,  of  the 
supernatural  Person  is  indispensable  to  the  highest  conviction 
of  the  reality  of  his  self -revelation.  Without  such  interven- 
tions, the  latter  could  not  be  recognized  infallibly. 

The  proof  of  these  conclusions  is  the  history  of  religion. 
Whenever  men  have  persuaded  themselves  that  they  are  divine 
messengers  they  have  adopted  likewise  the  belief  that  they  are 
able  to  work  miracles.  Among  such  in  modern  times  are 
Swedenborg  and  Irving  the  Scotch  preacher.  Impostors  also, 
perceiving  that  miracles  are  necessary  in  order  that  the  human 
mind  may  receive  a  religion  as  divine,  have  invariably  claimed 
miraculous  powers.  Such  instances  recur  constantly  from  the 
days  of  Elymas  the  Sorcerer  down  to  the  Mormon  Joseph 
Smith.  Though,  too,  the  founders  of  false  religions  have 
not  themselves  made  these  pretensions,  their  followers  have 
made  them  for  them.  Witness  the  miracles  that  came  to  be 
attributed  to  Gotama  and  to  Mohammed  by  their  disciples. 
Thus  it  would  appear  that  men  are  so  constituted  that  if  they 
are  truly  to  see  God  in  nature,  they  must  recognize  him  as 
a  person  who  can  and,  on  occasion,  does  manifest  himself  im- 
mediately and  in  contrast  with  nature,  and  that  even  the 
revelation  of  himself  in  nature  can  be  sufficiently  authenticated 
only  by  such  immediately  personal  and  exclusively  super- 
natural interventions.  No  question,  therefore,  can  be  more 
important  that  this,  if  so  important  as  this.  Are  such  inter- 
ventions, that  is,  are  miracles  possible;  and  if  so,  can  they 


I 


200  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

be  recognized?  The  very  existence  of  all  religion  worthy  of 
the  name  would  seem  to  be  suspended  on  the  answer  to  this 
inquiry. 

The  denials  of  the  possibility  of  supernatural  intervention 
in  the  course  of  nature  may  be  reduced  to  one.  They  all  take 
their  stand,  whether  positivistic  or  transcendental,  on  the  po- 
sition that  the  course  of  nature  is  and  must  be  uniform.  If 
they  do  not  always  hold  that  what  has  been  is  what  will  be, 
they  do  hold  this  to  be  true  at  least  to  this  extent,  that  the 
order  and  method  of  the  new  will  be  the  "same  with  that  of 
the  old  in  that  everything  will  still  be  accomplished  through 
the  forces  of  nature;  there  will  not  be,  as  there  could  not  be, 
the  personal  intervention  of  the  Supernatural.  This  hypothe- 
sis, however,  prevalent  though  it  is,  is  exposed  to  the  follow- 
ing objections : 

1.  It  may  not  be  decided  by  a  priori  considerations.  We 
can  argue  for  or  against  the  uniformity  of  nature  only  from 
what  nature  and  the  Supernatural  have  been  found  to  be. 
Antecedently,  there  is  as  much  reason  to  infer  that  nature  must 
not  be  uniform  as  that  it  must  be  uniform;  and  that  is  no 
reason.  In  a  word,  the  question  is  one  of  fact;  it  does  not 
involve  a  necessary  principle.     There  is  no  must  in  the  case. 

2.  It  begs  the  question.  It  is  at  any  rate  an  open  question 
whether  the  course  of  nature  has  been  uniform.  There  is 
the  best  of  testimony  that  it  has  not  been.  It  is  hard  to  see 
how  the  testimony  for  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  for  example, 
can  be  set  aside  and  all  testimony  not  be  invalidated. 

3.  It  begs  a  question  to  beg  which  is  for  these  theorists 
suicidal.  As  has  just  been  implied,  in  doing  so  they  knock  the 
ground  from  under  their  own  feet.  Whether  the  course  of 
nature  has  been  violated  or  has  not  been  violated,  can  be 
known  only  from  testimony ;  there  is  and  can  be  but  negative 
testimony,  that  is,  the  absence  of  testimony,  that  it  has  not 
been;  there  is  the  most  positive  and  the  best  testimony  that 
it  has  been.  To  decide,  therefore,  that  it  has  not  been  is 
to  decide  against  the  testimony,  and  this  is  to  invalidate  the 
one  possible  ground  of  judgment.  It  is  like  appealing  to 
reason  to  disprove  reason. 

5.  Nor  may  it  be  replied  that  the  very  point  at  issue  is 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  201 

whether  any  testimony  can  extend  to  the  Supernatural.  If 
this  be  so,  it  follows  that  we  do  not  know  that  there  have  been 
supernatural  interventions  in  the  course  of  nature,  but  it 
follows  just  as  surely  that  we  do  not  know  that  there  have 
not  been  any.  The  possibility  of  the  personal  manifestation 
of  the  Supernatural  is  left  just  where  it  was  before. 

5.  Nor  does  the  objector  gain  anything,  if  we  concede  that 
the  uniformity  of  nature  never  has  been  interrupted.  Were 
this  so,  we  might  not  infer  that  it  never  could  be.  Induction 
from  individual  facts,  however  numerous  or  well  attested, 
cannot  give  necessary  truth.  That  things  have  been  so  and 
so  does  not  prove  that  they  will  so  continue.  It  is  always 
possible  that  there  are  other  facts  which,  if  considered,  would 
show  the  possibility,  if  not  the  certainty,  of  change. 

6.  This  will  appear  more  clearly  when  we  remember  just 
what  the  uniformity  of  nature  is.  It  is  not  a  principle;  it  is 
only  the  name  of  a  mode  of  action.  It  does  not  state  why 
things  are  as  they  are ;  it  states  only  how  they  are,  or  rather 
how  it  is  assumed  that  they  have  been.  It  amounts  to  no 
more  than  this,  that  the  same  causes  acting  under  the  same 
conditions  produce  the  same  results.  This  is  the  only  princi- 
ple, the  only  ultimate  truth,  the  only  immutable  law,  in  the 
case.  What  is  there  in  this  to  hinder  at  any  time  the  personal 
intervention  of  the  Supernatural?  There  is  nothing  in  this 
principle  to  forbid  the  introduction  of  a  new  cause  in  the  course 
of  nature.  All  that  it  secures  is  that  nature  shall  be  uniform 
if  no  new  cause  be  introduced.  So  far  as  the  so-called  prin- 
ciple of  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  concerned,  the  Super- 
natural may  come  in  at  any  point,  and  when  he  does  his  strictly 
personal  manifestation  must  ensue. 

7.  The  modern  doctrine  of  the  conservation  and  the  cor- 
relation of  energy,  so  far  from  opposing,  tends  to  confirm  this 
position.  Indeed,  this  doctrine  implies  the  constant  manifes- 
tation in  nature  of  the  Supernatural  himself.  The  sum  of 
force  in  the  universe  can  continue  the  same  only  because  the 
Infinite  and  Absolute  Force  is  ''  ever  reenforcing  finite  waste, 
change  and  decay."  As  Herschel  has  pointed  out,  "  vital 
force  "  does  pass  away.  When,  for  example,  a  beast  dies,  his 
chemical  elements  appear  in  other  forms,  but  what  becomes  of 


202  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

his  life,  his  soul?  Thus  vital  force,  at  least,  would  run  out, 
if  the  Supernatural  did  not  intervene  to  supply  it.  Even  the 
modern  "  physicist  proper  declares  that  the  laws  of  matter 
alone  will  not  explain  life."  ^*  In  a  word,  the  very  uniformity 
of  nature  depends  on  the  coming  of  the  Supernatural  into 
nature.  It  has  been  planned  with  reference  to  it.  So  far, 
then,  from  the  objection  based  on  the  uniformity  of  nature, 
disproving  the  personal  intervention  of  the  Supernatural  in 
nature,  it  would  seem  to  suggest  and  demand  the  proof  of  its 
possibility  and  evtn  probability. 

The  following  mere  outline  of  this  proof  is  the  utmost  that 
our  limits  will  permit. 

1.  The  abstract  possibility  of  supernatural  interventions  in 
the  course  of  nature  cannot  be  rationally  questioned.  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge  is  reported  to  have  said  lately :  "  The  possi- 
bility of  what  we  call  miracles  has  been  hastily  and  vn^ongly 
denied.  They  are  not  necessarily  more  impossible  or  lawless 
than  the  interference  of  a  human  being  would  seem  to  a 
colony  of  ants.  They  should  be  judged  by  historical  evidence 
and  literary  criticism."  Indeed,  the  most  consistent  skeptics 
and  agnostics  have  not  denied  them.  J.  S.  Mill  was  ready  to 
admit  the  Supernatural,  if  it  could  be  found.  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, though  he  held  that  with  the  progress  of  science  all 
miracles  would  be  explained  away,  did  not  regard  them  incon- 
ceivable. Even  Hume,  though  he  was  the  author  of  the  fa- 
mous objection  that  no  amount  of  testimony  could  prove  a 
miracle,  again  and  again  allows  its  abstract  possibility.^'^  Be- 
yond this,  it  could  easily  be  shown  that  men  generally  and, 
as  it  would  seem,  naturally  believe  that  there  are  such  inter- 
ventions. In  a  word,  if  the  bare  existence  of  the  Supernatural 
be  admitted,  his  intervention  in  nature  must  be  possible  a 
priori.    Otherwise,  he  would  not  be  the  Supernatural. 

2.  This  possibility  becomes  much  clearer  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  the  Supernatural,  as  we  have  already  shown,  is  a  person 
and  is  constantly  acting  in  and  through  nature.  This  granted, 
no  objection  can  be  raised  to  strictly  personal  action  on  his 

"Ward's  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  vol.  ii,  p.  vi. 
*^  Essays,  ii,  pp.  131,  132,  Ed.  ed.,  1788. 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  203 

part.  As  Mozley  says,  "  The  primary  difficulty  of  philosophy 
relating  to  Deity  is  action  at  all.  ...  If  action  is  con- 
ceded at  all  there  is  no  difficulty  about  miraculous  action."  ^^ 
A  being  who  can  use  tools  can  certainly  work  with  his  own 
hands. 

3.  It  is  probable  that  the  Supernatural  will  choose  to  do  so. 
This  follows  from  the  fact  that  he  is  a  person.  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  a  person,  not  only  to  manifest  himself  in  action, 
but  also  in  strictly  personal  action.  We  see  this  in  our  own 
case.  It  does  not  satisfy  us  to  hold  intercourse  with  others 
by  proxy  alone.  We  wish  to  speak  to  them  ourselves  face  to 
face.  It  does  not  develop  us  to  do  nothing  but  tend  a  machine. 
Unless  there  is  room  for  handicraft,  production  will  be  at  the 
cost  of  manhood.  Hence,  it  is  only  to  be  expected,  that  the 
Supernatural  would  manifest  himself  in  a  strictly  personal 
way ;  that  he  would  speak  to  us ;  that  he  would  act  directly  on 
us;  that  he  would  do  something  with  his  own  hand  alone  in 
the  course  of  nature;  that  he  would  even  himself  come  and 
dwell  among  us,  at  least  for  a  time,  as  a  man  with  men.  Were 
the  Supernatural  Person  not  to  do  something  of  this  kind,  we 
could  scarcely  conceive  of  him  as  the  Supernatural  Person. 
So  far  as  we  know,  a  person  will  certainly  choose  to  act  thus. 

4.  This  conclusion  is  much  strengthened  by  the  consider- 
ation that  nature  would  seem  to  have  been  constituted  with  a 
view  to  such  action  by  the  Supernatural  Person.  As  Godet 
says,  "  Nature  is  from,  by,  and  for  spirit  "  f^  and,  though,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  Supernatural  and  the  spiritual  are  not  identi- 
cal, yet  the  Supernatural,  because  the  Person,  must  also  be  the 
Spirit.  That  is,  as  is  involved  in  Godet's  statement  and  as 
this  paper  has  tried  to  show,  the  Supernatural  must  be  behind 
nature;  the  Supernatural  must  uphold  nature;  the  Super- 
natural must  be  the  end  of  nature:  that  all  this  should  be  so 
is  the  necessity  of  thought.  This,  however,  implies  that  na- 
ture has  been  so  arranged  as  to  presuppose  the  personal  inter- 
vention of  the  Supernatural.  Otherwise,  it  would  fetter  him; 
and  depending  on  him  and  existing  for  him,  as  it  does,  that 
it  should  fetter  him  is  inconceivable. 

*'  On  Miracles,  p.  84. 

^  The  Defense  of  the  Christian  Faith,  p.  127. 


204  "^^E  SUPERNATURAL 

5.  But  we  are  not  left  to  inferences  like  the  above,  trust- 
worthy though  these  could  be  shown  to  be.  We  know  that  the 
Supernatural  has  acted  in  a  purely  personal  manner.  All 
historic  time,  whether  of  the  heavens  or  of  the  earth,  of  the 
earth  or  of  man,  must  have  begun  with  such  an  act.  Get  rid 
of  all  miracles,  if  you  please;  admit  only  the  uniform  sequence 
of  natural  phenomena,  if  you  will:  and  the  great  miracle  of 
creation  remains  on  any  natural  theory  of  the  universe,  evo- 
lutionary or  not;  and  creation  is  an  absolutely  personal  act. 
It  must  have  taken  place;  the  uniformity  of  jaature,  if  nothing 
else,  is  the  demonstration  of  that:  and  it  could  have  taken 
place  only  by  the  immediate  and  so  personal  action  of  the 
Supernatural;  for  before  the  creation  there  was  nothing  in 
which  and  through  which  he  could  act.  Whether,  therefore, 
the  Supernatural  has  so  acted  again  or  does  so  act  to-day  is 
for  us  candidly  to  inquire.  His  nature  as  a  person  renders  it 
probable  that  he  will ;  and  the  fact  that  he  must  have  done  so 
once,  that  is,  at  the  creation,  increases  this  probability. 

6.  The  progressive  development  of  religion  is  inexplicable 
unless  the  Supernatural  does  continue  so  to  manifest  himself. 
Religion,  at  least  in  all  its  higher  forms,  presupposes,  not  only 
the  possibility  or  even  the  probability,  but  the  fact  of  such 
personal  manifestations  of  the  Supernatural.  It  believes  in 
communion  with  God  himself.  Were  the  reality  of  that  to  be 
disproved,  its  life  would  be  destroyed.  If  God  did  not  make 
himself  known  to  those  who  are  in  sympathy  with  him  save  as 
the  "  heavens  declare  his  glory  and  the  firmament  showeth  his 
handiwork,"  if  he  could  not  himself  dwell  in  us  as  "  a  prin- 
ciple of  a  new  and  a  divine  life  " ;  the  power  of  such  re- 
ligion as  tends  to  persist  as  man  develops  would  be  gone. 
Can  it  be,  then,  that  such  personal  manifestation  of  the 
Supernatural  is  not  real?  Can  it  be  that  religion  is  only  the 
most  solemn  of  all  delusions?  If  so,  there  is  no  mystery  so 
great  as  that  of  its  persistence.  Nothing  has  been  able  to 
overthrow  it,  yet  it  itself  rests  on  nothing. 

7.  This  conclusion  is  much  strengthened  by  the  fact  that 
the  course  of  human  development,  and  specially  of  human 
religious  development,  has  been  interrupted  and  perverted  by 
sin.     Hence,  though  the  normal  religious  needs  of  men  did 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  205 

not  demand,  as  we  have  just  seen  that  they  do  demand,  the 
personal  intervention  of  God  in  human  hfe  and  history,  his 
abnormal  needs  brought  about  by  the  entrance  of  sin  would  so 
require.  Thus,  because  sin  has  marred  the  workmanship  of 
God  in  physical  nature  and  has  defaced  his  image  in  the  hu- 
man soul  and  has  deflected  his  development  of  the  race,  the 
revelation  of  the  Supernatural  in  and  through  the  natural  is 
far  from  being  as  extensive  as  or  what  otherwise  it  would 
have  been.  Again,  because  of  the  noetic  efforts  of  sin  we 
can  not  discern  fully  or  interpret  truly  even  the  partial  and 
perverted  revelation  of  the  Supernatural  which  the  natural 
still  affords.  Once  more,  and  as  what  is  most  important,  sin 
makes  necessary  the  revelation  of  a  new  kind  of  knowledge, 
of  that  with  regard  to  God  which  nature  could  by  no  possibility 
reveal.  Nature  can  reveal  only  the  essential  attributes  of 
God,  only  what  he  must  be  and,  consequently,  must  require  be- 
cause he  is  God;  but  what  guilty  sinners  need  to  know  is  his 
grace  and  how  it  can  be  obtained,  that  is,  the  free  purpose  of 
his  heart,  and  this  can  be  known  only  as  he  himself  shall  di- 
rectly declare  it.  Therefore,  even  were  we  to  allow  that  the 
personal  intervention  of  the  Supernatural  in  the  natural  would 
be  unlikely,  the  world  continuing  to  develop  along  its  original 
and  God-laid  lines;  the  presumption  would  all  be  the  other 
way,  the  world  having  been  deflected  from  its  first  and  true 
line  of  development.  In  a  word,  to  quote  B.  B.  Warfield, 
''  Extraordinary  exigencies  (we  speak  as  a  man)  are  the  suf- 
ficient explanation  of  extraordinary  expedients." 

8.  Must  not,  then,  directly  and  exclusively  supernatural 
works,  such  as  we  designate  miracles,  be  expected,  both  to  call 
attention  to  the  messengers  bringing  the  good  tidings  of  the 
grace  of  God  and  to  authenticate  them  as  his  ambassadors  and 
so  to  attest  the  truth  of  their  proclamation?  Moreover,  as 
such  supernatural  interventions,  because  their  purpose  is  as 
just  stated,  might  not  be  expected  when  no  new  revelation  was 
being  made ;  so  at  the  epochs  characterized  and  constituted  by 
such  revelations,  as,  the  age  of  Moses  when  God  revealed  him- 
self as  Jehovah  the  redeeming  God,  and,  above  all,  in  "  the 
days  of  the  Son  of  man  "  when  the  eternal  "  Word  was  made 
flesh  and  dwelt  among  us  "  and  "  fulfilled  all  righteousness  " 


I 


2o6  THE  SUPERNATURAL 

in  our  behalf  and  "  died  for  our  sins  "  and  "  was  raised  again 
for  our  justification  "  and  ascended  to  the  right  hand  of  God  to 
be  "  head  over  all  things  to  the  church  "■ — at  such  times  and 
under  such  circumstances  would  it  not  be  the  most  difficult  of 
miracles  in  the  sense  of  wonders,  if  we  did  not  discern  mir- 
acles? Thus,  so  far  from  their  being  credible  only  because 
they  occur  in  connection  with  Christianity,  Christianity  itself 
would  be  incredible  because  impossible  without  them.  To  use 
the  thought  and  ^almost  the  exact  words  of  Robert  Hall,  it 
could  not  be  supposed  that  God  would  give  even  his  Son  to 
save  us  and  not  himself  ring  his  bell  for  us  to  hear  him. 

9.  Nor  may  it  be  replied  that  were  the  Supernatural  thus 
to  intervene  directly  in  nature,  such  manifestations  could  not 
be  recognized  as  such  by  us.  This  overlooks  the  fact  that  it  is 
the  manifestation  of  a  person  to  persons  that  is  under  consider- 
ation. Now  personality  is  known  immediately  by  personality, 
and  more  especially  if  there  be  a  moral  affinity  between  the 
persons.  You  do  not  need  to  see  every  beast  to  be  sure  that 
a  man  is  not  a  beast.  You  feel  at  once,  and  you  can  not  help 
feeling,  a  unique  kinship  between  him  and  yourself.  You 
know  directly  what  he  is.  And  somewhat  so,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary that  you  should  have  surveyed  all  nature  in  order  to 
recognize  the  Supernatural  as  supernatural.  You  feel  im- 
mediately both  the  unique  kinship  between  him  and  yourself, 
and  also  the  infinite  difference.  Because  he  is  a  person,  you 
recognize  at  once  his  personality  and  the  supematuralness  of 
his  personality.  You  know  directly  what  he  is,  if  only  a  little 
of  all  that  he  is.  Of  course,  this  will  depend  greatly  on  the 
moral  affinity  between  you  and  him.  A  bad  man  may  become 
insensible  to  the  supematuralness  of  the  Supernatural,  but  he 
becomes  at  the  same  time  unconscious  of  the  personality  of 
the  Supernatural.  Both  go  together;  and  the  former  reveals, 
and  cannot  but  reveal  unmistakably,  the  latter.  Hence,  truly  to 
know  the  manhood  of  Christ  is  to  feel  him  to  be  "the  Son  of 
God."  In  a  word,  as  persons  we  are  too  much  like  the  Super- 
natural Person  and  too  conscious  of  our  superiority  to  all  else 
than  ourselves  in  nature  not  to  recognize  at  once  his  infinite 
superiority.  In  the  unique  light  of  the  kinship  between  us 
and  him  we  cannot  but  see  his  supematuralness.     Thus  in 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  207 

every  respect  is  the  reality  of  the  strictly  personal  interven-' 
tion  of  the  Supernatural  in  the  natural  a  real  necessity  of 
thought. 

VIL 

Conclusion. 

What,  then,  is  the  net  result  of  the  discussion?  It  is  not 
that  Christianity  is  thereby  established  as  the  supernatural  re- 
ligion. This  must  still  be  decided  by  the  appropriate  evi- 
dence. The  way,  however,  has  been  opened,  and  the  only 
way,  for  the  fair  consideration  of  this  evidence;  and  this  has 
been  done  in  that  we  have  established  the  reality  of  the  ex- 
istence of  the  Supernatural,  of  his  manifestation  through  na- 
ture, of  his  personality,  and  of  the  possibility  and  even  prob- 
ability of  his  personal  intervention  in  nature.  It  is  true  that 
no  one  of  these  has  been  in  the  strict  sense  demonstrated.  But 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  this  is  impossible.  Himself  the 
ground  and  so  proof  of  everything,  there  is  nothing  that  can 
be  the  ground  and  so  proof  of  the  Supernatural,  Yet  as  the 
building  necessarily  evidences  the  foundation  on  which  it 
rests;  so  all  nature,  and  especially  that  in  it  which  is  highest 
and  surest,  namely,  reason,  demands  the  reality  in  the  above 
respects  of  the  Supernatural.  This  must  be  granted  or  reason 
must  be  stultified.  To  have  shown  this  is  thus  both  the  utmost 
that  could  be  shown  and  in  itself  enough. 


THE   ESCHATOLOGICAL   ASPECT   OF  THE 

PAULINE  CONCEPTION  OF 

THE  SPIRIT 

Geerhardus  Vos 


I 


Emphasis  in  recent  biblico-theological  discussion  on  the  eschatological 
outlook  of  the  early  church.  Its  influence  ►traced  in  various  as- 
pects of  the  Pauline  teaching.  Abuse  of  the  method  and  rela- 
tive warrant  for  its  application.  Paul's  conception  of  the  Spirit 
to  be  examined  as  to  its  eschatological  affinities.  Eschatological 
aspects  of  the  Spirit  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  inter-canonical 
development  of  the  doctrine.  The  Gospels.  The  early  chapters 
of  Acts.  Paul's  statements:  i)  As  to  the  Spirit  in  connection 
with  the  end;  2.)  As  to  the  relation  of  the  Spirit  to  the  exalted 
Christ;  3.)  As  to  the  semi-eschatological  character  of  the  be- 
liever's state,  both  objectively  and  subjectively  considered;  4.) 
As  to  the  Christian's  connection  through  the  Spirit  with  the 
world  of  heaven;  5.)  As  to  the  Spirit's  function  in  revealing  the 
eschatological  content  of  "wisdom";  6)  As  to  the  Spirit  in  op- 
position to  evil  spirits.  Inferences  drawn  from  the  discussion : 
The  eschatological  significance  of  the  Spirit  i)  throws  light  on 
Paul's  conception  of  the  uniformly  pneumatic  character  of  the 
Christian  life  at  every  point;  2)  proves  the  non-availability  of 
the  Spirit  for  explaining  the  personal  constitution  of  the  preex- 
istent  Christ;  3)  furnishes  the  most  impressive  witness  for  the 
supematuralism  of  Paul's  view  of  the  Christian  life. 


THE   ESCHATOLOGICAL   ASPECT   OF  THE 

PAULINE  CONCEPTION   OF 

THE   SPIRIT 

Like  other  parts  of  New  Testament  Theology  the  interpre- 
tation of  Paul's  teaching  has  strongly  felt  the  influence  of  the 
emphasis  placed  in  recent  discussion  upon  the  eschatological 
outlook  of  the  early  Church.  It  is  said  that,  since  the  person 
of  the  Messiah  and  his  work  form  already  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment part  of  an  essentially  eschatological  program,  and  since 
the  acceptance  of  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  was  the  distinctive  fea- 
ture of  the  new  faith,  therefore  the  whole  perspective  in  which 
the  content  of  this  religion  presented  itself  to  the  first  Christians 
had  of  necessity  to  assume  eschatological  form.  They  could 
not  help  correlating  more  closely  than  we  are  accustomed  to  do 
their  present  beliefs  and  experiences  with  the  final,  eternal  is- 
sues of  the  history  of  redemption,  and  interpreting  the  for- 
mer in  the  light  of  the  latter.  To  an  extent  we  can  hardly 
appreciate  theoretically,  far  less  reproduce  in  our  mode 
of  feeling,  they  were  conscious  of  standing  at  the  turning- 
point  of  the  ages,  of  living  in  the  very  presence  of  the  world 
to  come. 

It  is  true  that  contemporary  Judaism  had  not  consistently 
kept  the  Messiah  and  his  work  in  that  central  place  of  the  es- 
chatological stage  which  the  Old  Testament  assigned  to  him. 
From  within  the  coming  aeon  he  had  been  removed  to  its 
threshold,  and  his  kingdom  relegated  to  the  rank  of  a  mere  pro- 
visional episode  in  the  great  drama  of  the  end.  This,  however, 
was  due  to  the  inherent  dualism  of  the  Jewish  eschatology. 
Because  it  was  felt  that  the  earthly  and  the  heavenly,  the  sen- 
sual and  the  spiritual,  the  temporal  and  the  eternal,  the  political 
and  the  transcendental,  the  national  and  the  cosmical  would  not 
combine,  and  yet  neither  of  the  two  could  safely  be  abandoned^ 


212  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

the  incongruous  elements  were  mechanically  forced  together  in 
the  scheme  of  two  successive  kingdoms,  during  the  former  of 
which  the  urgent  claims  of  Israel  pertaining  to  this  world 
would  receive  at  least  a  transient  satisfaction,  whilst  in  the 
latter  the  higher  and  broader  hopes  would  find  their  everlast- 
ing embodiment.  Under  this  scheme  the  Messiah  and  his  work 
inevitably  became  associated  with  the  provisional,  temporal 
order  of  affairs  and  ceased  to  be  of  significance  for  the  final 
state. 

But  no  such  necessity  for  keeping  apaft  the  Messianic 
developments  and  the  consummated  state  existed  for  the  Chris- 
tian mind.  Here  from  the  outset  the  emphasis  had  been 
placed  on  the  virtual  identity  of  the  blessings  and  privileges 
pertaining  to  the  rule  of  Christ  with  the  eternal  life  at  the 
end.  While  as  a  matter  of  history  the  opening  days  of  the 
Messiah  are  seen  to  lie  this  side  of  the  ultimate  world-crisis, 
this  is  much  more  a  chronological  than  a  substantial  distinc- 
tion, the  Christ  is  not  kept  outside  of  the  future  world,  nor 
is  the  future  world  regarded  as  incapable  of  projecting  itself 
into  the  present  life.  On  the  contrary  the  whole  Messianic 
hope  has  become  so  thoroughly  spiritualized  as  to  make  it  in- 
distinguishable in  essence  and  character  from  the  final  kingdom 
of  God.  Through  the  appearance  of  the  Messiah,  as  the  great 
representative  figure  of  the  coming  aeon,  this  new  age  has  be- 
gun to  enter  into  the  actual  experience  of  the  believer.  He 
has  been  translated  into  a  state,  which,  while  falling  short  of 
the  consummated  life  of  eternity,  yet  may  be  truly  character- 
ized as  semi-eschatological. 

In  view  of  this  it  can  cause  no  surprise,  we  are  told,  when 
the  mind  of  the  New  Testament  writers  in  its  attempt  to  grasp 
the  content  of  the  Christian  salvation  makes  the  future  the 
interpreter  of  the  present,  eschatology  the  norm  and  example 
of  soteriological  experience.  Strange  as  this  movement  of 
thought  seems  to  us,  it  must  have  been  to  the  believers  of  the 
apostolic  age  quite  natural  and  familiar.  The  coming  of 
the  Christ  had  fixed  their  attention  upon  the  eternal  world  in 
all  its  absoluteness  and  fulness  and  with  this  in  mind  they 
interpreted  everything  that  through  the  Christ  happened  for 
them  and  in  them.     Even  in  our  Lord's  teaching  we  are  in- 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  213 

vited  to  observe  the  influence  of  this  factor.  Not  as  if  the 
kingdom  proclaimed  by  him  were  altogether  a  kingdom  of 
the  future  having  no  existence  in  the  present.  Such  a  view  is 
too  palpably  at  variance  with  his  plain  teaching  to  gain  ac- 
ceptance with  any  except  a  few  "  thoroughgoing  eschatolo- 
gists  ".  But  the  firmness  with  which  the  two  aspects  of  the 
kingdom  are  held  together  under  the  same  name  and  repre- 
sented as  one  continuous  thing  and  the  absolute  newness  and 
incomparableness  which  are  predicated  of  the  whole  as  re- 
gards the  Old  Testament  conditions,  all  this  proves  that  Jesus 
viewed  his  work  as  in  the  most  direct  manner  interlinked 
with  the  life  to  come,  to  all  intents  the  beginning  of  a  new 
creation.  And  in  the  early  chapters  of  the  Book  of  Acts  the 
same  thought  is  found  to  color  the  outlook  of  the  mother- 
church,  a  feature  which  must  be  true  to  the  facts,  because 
it  does  not  quite  coincide  with  Luke's  own  point  of  view. 

As  for  Paul,  his  attitude  in  regard  to  this  matter  was  from  the 
outset  determined  by  the  fact,  that  he  views  the  resurrection 
of  Christ  as  the  beginning  of  the  general  resurrection  of  the 
saints.  The  general  resurrection  of  the  saints  being  an 
eschatological  event,  indeed  constituting  together  with  the 
judgment  the  main  content  of  the  eschatological  program,  it 
follows  that  to  Paul  in  this  one  point  at  least  the  eschatological 
course  of  events  had  already  been  set  in  motion,  an  integral 
piece  of  "  the  last  things  "  has  become  an  accomplished  fact. 
Nor  does  this  remain  with  Paul  an  isolated  instance  of  the 
principle  referred  to.  We  are  asked  to  observe  in  several  other 
connections  that  the  Apostle  thinks  in  eschatological  terms  even 
when  speaking  of  present  developments.  The  sending  forth 
of  Christ  marks  to  him  the  TrXrjpcofia  tov  xpoi^^v  (Gal.  iv.  4), 
a  phrase  which  certainly  means  more  than  that  the  time  was 
ripe  for  the  introduction  of  Christ  into  the  world :  the  fulness 
of  the  time  means  the  end  of  that  aeon  and  the  commencement 
of  another  world-period.  As  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  an- 
ticipates and  secures  the  general  resurrection,  so  the  death  of 
Christ,  usually  represented  by  Paul  as  an  atonement,  occas- 
ionally appears  as  securing  and  embodying  in  advance  the 
judgment  and  destruction  of  the  spiritual  powers  opposed  to 
God,  thus  bringing  the  other  great  eschatological  transaction 


214  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

within  the  scope  of  the  present  activity  of  Christ  and  the  pres- 
ent experience  of  believers,  Rom.  viii.  3 ;  I  Cor.  ii.  6  (where 
notice  the  present  participle  xarapyovfi^/oyv :  "who  are  al- 
ready coming  to  nought  ").  Even  the  idea  of  aayrrjpia  "  sal- 
vation *',  which  is  to  us  predominantly  suggestive  of  our  Chris- 
tian state  and  experience  in  this  life,  is  shown  to  have  been 
with  Paul  in  its  original  signification  an  eschatological  idea 
denoting  deliverance  from  the  wrath  to  come,  salvation  in  the 
judgment,  and  from  this  it  is  believed  to  have  been  carried 
back  into  the  present  life,  first  of  all  to  express  the  thought, 
that  even  now  the  believer  through  Christ  possesses  immunity 
from  the  condemnation  of  the  last  day.^  The  idea  of  "  re- 
demption ",  so  closely  associated  with  the  death  of  Christ, 
none  the  less  has  its  eschatological  application,  although  it  is 
not  asserted  that  this  is  the  older  usage,  Rom.  viii.  23 ;  i  Cor. 
i.  30;  Eph.  i.  14,  iv.  30.  Justification  is,  of  course,  to  Paul 
the  basis  on  which  the  whole  Christian  state  rests,  and  in  so 
far  eminently  concerns  the  present,  and  yet  in  its  finality  and 
comprehensiveness,  covering  not  merely  time  but  likewise  etern- 
ity, it  presents  remarkable  analogies  to  the  absolute  vindication 
expected  at  the  end.  And  the  subjective  renewal  of  the  be- 
liever likewise  is  placed  by  the  Apostle  in  the  light  of  the 
world  to  come.  The  Kaivrj  /ctio-l^  spoken  of  in  2  Cor.  v.  17 
means  the  beginning  of  that  world-renewal  in  which  all 
eschatology  culminates. 

Undoubtedly  in  all  this  there  is  some  one-sidedness  and  ex- 
aggeration. Altogether  too  much  has  been  made,  in  calling 
attention  to  the  above  and  other  allied  facts,  of  the  element  of 
time,  as  if  the  peculiar  perspective  in  these  matters  could  be 

^  Cf.  the  early  passages  i  Thess,  v.  8,  9 ;  2  Thess.  ii.  13,  14,  but  also  in 
the  later  epistles,  Rom.  v.  9,  10,  xiii.  11;  Phil,  i,  28,  iii.  20;  2  Tim.  iv.  18. 
In  all  of  these  the  arurripta  is  eschatological.  Paul,  however,  knows  also 
of  a  "  being  saved  "  i.  e.  being  in  process  of  salvation,  i  Cor.  i.  18,  xv.  2 ; 
2  Cor.  ii.  15,  in  all  of  which  the  present  tense  is  used,  and  of  a  "having 
been  saved",  Eph.  ii.  5;  2  Tim.  i.  9,  where  the  perfect  and  aorist  occur. 
From  the  original  eschatological  sense  the  fact  may  be  explained  that 
adi^tiv,  corrripta  stand  regularly  in  Paul  for  the  subjective  side  of  salva- 
tion, what  is  dogmatically  called  the  application  of  redemption.  The 
eschatological  salvation  lies  in  the  subjective  sphere. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  215 

explained  from  the  early  Christian  belief  in  the  nearness  of 
the  parousia.  When  this  chronological  element  is  unduly 
pressed,  such  monstrosities  result  as  Schweitzer's  construction 
of  the  life  of  Jesus.  And  the  writers  who  are  most  enthusias- 
tic about  trying  the  key  of  eschatology  upon  the  lock  of 
every  New  Testament  problem,  are  also  the  least  apt  to  hold 
back  with  their  conviction,  that  the  eschatological  frame  of 
mind  is  a  hopeless  anachronism  to  the  modern  consciousness. 
Still  the  abuse  made  of  the  theory  should  not  shut  our  eyes  to 
whatever  elements  of  truth  it  may  have  brought  for  the  first 
time  into  focus.  It  can  be  shown,  we  believe,  that  the  phe- 
nomena dwelt  upon  have  their  root  in  practical  and  theoreti- 
cal premises,  which  were  fixed  in  the  minds  of  the  New 
Testament  writers  altogether  independently  of  the  question  of 
the  relative  nearness  or  remoteness  of  the  parousia.  In  each 
case  the  consideration  is  not  that  in  point  of  time,  but  that  in 
point  of  causal  nexus  and  identity  of  religious  privilege,  the 
present  is  most  closely  linked  to  the  life  of  eternity.  Not  the 
belief  in  the  nearness  of  the  parousia  first  gave  rise  to  this 
consciousness.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  reason  to  assume  that 
the  expectation  of  a  speedy  approach  of  the  end  which  is  re- 
flected in  the  New  Testament  writings  sprang,  at  least  in  part, 
from  the  consciousness  in  question.  The  early  church  lived  to 
such  an  extent  in  the  thought  of  the  world  to  come,  that  it? 
could  hardly  help  hoping  it  to  be  near  also  in  point  of  time. 
But  this  was  a  mere  by-product  of  a  much  broader  and  deeper 
state  of  mind.  Thus  it  happens  that  the  principle  to  which 
the  eschatological  school  has  called  attention  may  retain  its 
validity,  even  though  the  present  age  and  the  life  of  eternity 
have  become  to  our  knowledge  much  farther  separated  than 
they  were  to  the  vision  of  the  early  church. 

We  propose  in  the  following  pages  to  investigate  to  what 
extent  Paul's  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  shows  interdepen- 
dence with  his  eschatology.  At  this  point  better  than  at  any 
other  will  we  be  able  to  test  the  relative  warrant  for  the 
eschatological  method  of  approach,  and  to  understand  the  pe- 
culiar way  in  which  it  can  contribute  to  an  adequate  apprecia- 
tion of  the  fundamental  structure  of  the  great  Apostle's  teach- 
ing.    Another  reason  for  the  selection  lies  in  this,  that  in  the 


2i6  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

treatment  of  Paul's  pneumatology  the  new  point  of  view  has 
thus  far  been  less  thoroughly  and  systematically  pursued  than 
in  regard  to  other  aspects  of  his  gospel.  One  reason  for  this  is 
that  the  theological  conception  of  the  Spirit  is  chiefly  regulated 
by  the  closing  discourses  of  our  Lord  recorded  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  Here  the  Spirit  seems  to  appear  as  merely  the  repre- 
sentative of  Christ  during  his  absence,  and  therefore  confined 
in  his  operation  to  the  intermediate  period  between  the  de- 
parture of  Jesus  and  his  return  to  the  disciples.  Thus  re- 
stricted the  Spirit 'would  have  no  further  significance  for  the 
consummated  state,  when  Christ  will  resume  direct  inter- 
course with  his  own  in  a  higher  form.  But  even  for  John 
this  would  be  a  very  one-sided  statement  of  the  facts.  The 
Spirit  does  not  abide  temporarily  with  the  disciples  but  "  for- 
ever'' Jno.  xiv.  1 6,  17.  It  is  the  Spirit's  specific  function  "  to 
declare  the  things  that  are  to  come,"  xvi.  13.  The  Spirit 
"  guides  into  all  the  truth  ",  and  hence  is  called  "  the  Spirit 
of  truth",  XV.  26,  xvi.  13,  and  this  must  be  taken  in  connec- 
tion with  the  peculiar  Johannine  objective  conception  of 
"  truth "  as  designating  the  transcendental  realities  of  the 
heavenly  world,  that  truth  of  which  Jesus  is  the  center  and  in- 
carnation, whence  also  the  Spirit  in  supplying  it  takes  of  Jesus' 
own,  xvi.  14,  15.  Indeed  so  absolutely  does  the  Spirit  belong 
to  the  other  world,  that  the  kosmos  is  simply  declared  incapa- 
ble of  receiving,  beholding,  and  knowing  him,  xiv.  17.  Nor 
is  the  intermediate  operation  of  the  Spirit  in  the  present 
meant  to  preclude  his  eternal  significance  as  a  factor  in  the 
life  to  come.  That  the  latter  idea  is  not  more  pointedly  brought 
out  in  John  is  due  to  the  thoroughgoing  manner  in  which  the 
Fourth  Gospel  eternalizes  the  present  state  of  the  believer,  and 
emphasizes  the  identity  rather  than  the  difference  between  the 
life  now  possessed  and  the  life  to  be  inherited  hereafter. 
Viewed  in  this  light  the  prominence  of  the  Spirit's  activity  now 
not  only  does  not  tell  against,  but  distinctly  favors  the  assump- 
tion that  the  Spirit  has  his  proper  sphere  and  a  dominating 
part  in  the  eschatological  world. 

But,  even  if  the  facts  were  different  as  regards  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  this  would  not  be  decisive  for  the  case  of  Paul.    Our 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  217 

Lord  in  John  might  have  confined  himself  to  pointing  out  one 
particular  aspect  of  the  Spirit's  work,  and  Paul  might  teach  the 
full-orbed  doctrine  of  the  Spirit,  so  as  to  bring  the  two  hemi- 
spheres of  his  present  and  his  eschatological  activity  under 
equal  illumination.  In  how  far  this  is  actually  the  case  we 
endeavor  to  trace  in  the  following  survey  of  Paul's  teaching 
on  the  subject. 

At  the  outset  it  will  be  well  to  remark  that  the  connection 
of  the  Spirit  with  eschatology  reaches  back  into  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. The  fundamental  sense  of  nn  is  in  the  Old  Testament, 
that  of  air  in  motion,  whilst  that  of  air  at  rest  seems  to  have 
been  chiefly  associated  with  the  Greek  irvevixa.^  This  rendered 
the  word  fit  to  describe  the  Spirit  on  his  energizing,  active  side 
and  falls  in  with  his  ultimate  eschatological  function,  since  the 
eschatological  element  in  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament  is 
but  the  supreme  expression  of  its  character  as  a  religion  of 
God's  free  historical  self-assertion,  a  religion,  not  of  nature- 
processes,  but  of  redemption  and  revelation.  Aside  from  this 
the  Spirit  and  eschatology  are  linked  together  along  four  lines 
of  thought.  First  we  have  the  idea  that  the  Spirit  by  special 
manifestations  of  the  supernatural,  by  certain  prophetic  signs, 
heralds  the  near  approach  of  the  future  world.  Thus  in  Joel 
iii.  I  ff.  (ii.  28  ff  in  English)  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  on 
all  flesh  and  the  subsequent  prophesying  and  related  phenomena 
are  described  as  all  taking  place  "  before  the  great  and  terrible 
day  of  Jehovah  comes  "  (verse  4).  The  idea  is  not  that  the 
Spirit  will  be  characteristic  of  the  eschatological  state,  but  that 
it  naturally  falls  to  him  to  work  the  premonitions  of  its  coming. 
This  follows  from  the  parallelism^  between  the  Spirit-worked 
phenomena  and  the  other  cosmical  signs  enumerated.  When 
this  terrible  castastrophe  draws  near,  great  prophetic  excite- 
ment will  lay  hold  upon  men,  even  as  the  powers  of  nature  will 
become  moved  in  sympathy  with  what  is  approaching.  It  is  not 
excluded  by  this  that  the  Spirit  will  also  have  his  place  and  role 
within  the  new  era  itself,  but  this  is  not  indicated  even 
indirectly.      The   Spirit  works   these   signs,    not   because   he 

=  Stade,  Bihl.  Theol.  d.  Alt.  Test.  I,  p.  182,  note  3. 
'  The  two  are  parallel,  not  successive. 


2i8  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

Stands  for  the  eschatological  as  such,  but  because  the  prophetic 
and  ecstatic  experiences  belong  to  his  province.* 

In  the  second  place  the  Spirit  is  brought  into  the  eschatologi- 
cal  era  itself  as  forming  the  official  equipment  of  the  Messiah. 
This  is  done  in  a  number  of  passages,  Is.  xi.  2,  xxviii.  5,  xlii.  i, 
lix.  21  (  ?),  Ixi.  I.  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  Messiah  receives 
the  Spirit  as  a  pennanent  possession,  and  not  temporarily  as 
the  prophets ;  further  that  the  effects  of  this  endowment  lie  in 
the  ethico-religious  sphere.  By  calling  this  equipment  with  the 
Spirit  official  we  do  not  mean  to  imply  that'^it  is  externally  at- 
tached to  the  Messiah  and  does  not  affect  his  own  subjective  re- 
ligious life,  for  according  to  Is.  xi.  2  he  is  not  merely  a  "  Spirit 
of  wisdom  and  understanding  ",  of  "  counsel  and  might  ",  but 
also  a  "  Spirit  of  knowledge  and  fear  of  Jehovah  ".  Still 
the  prophet  does  not  mean  to  describe  what  the  Spirit  is  for 
the  Messiah  himself,  but  what  through  the  Messiah  he  is  for 
the  people.^ 

*Volz,  Der  Geist  Gottes  und  die  verwandten  Erscheinungen  im  Alien 
Testament  und  im  anschliessenden  Judenthum,  1910  (p.  93),  while  explain- 
ing as  above,  thinks  that  Acts  ii.  16-21  give  a  different  exegesis  of  the 
Joel-passage,  because  the  disciples  are  represented  as  permanently  pos- 
sessed of  the  Spirit.  The  contrary  is  true:  Peter  distinctly  quotes  the 
entire  passage,  including  the  words  which  put  the  phenomena  named  be- 
fore the  coming  of  the  day  of  Jehovah  (v.  20),  and  which  assign  a 
period  of  some  length  during  which  opportunity  is  given  to  call  upon  the 
name  of  Jehovah  in  order  to  ultimate  salvation  in  the  day  of  judgment 
(v.  21).  The  Spirit's  working  is  here  no  less  sub-eschatological  than  in 
Joel.  That  it  can  be  considered  a  gift  of  the  exalted  Jesus  (v.  33) 
and  is  perpetuated  into  the  subsequent  period  does  not  alter  its  char- 
acter. Peter  is  even  more  explicit  than  Joel  in  regard  to  the  point  in 
question,  for  he  modifies  the  quotation  by  introducing  into  it  the  words 
"in  the  last  days",  a  phrase  which  in  the  New  Testament  is  everywhere 
sub-eschatological. 

"Volz  op.  cit.  p.  87:  The  Spirit  "attaches  less  to  the  person  than  to 
the  office,  for  in  connection  with  the  Messiah  Judaism  is  more  interested 
in  what  the  Messiah  accomplishes  than  in  what  he  is."  Volz  in  this 
recent  book  adheres  to  his  earlier  denial  of  the  Isaianic  origin  of  the 
great  Messianic  prophecies,  chs.  ix.  and  xi.,  and  finds  further  support  for 
this  denial  in  the  ethico-religious  character  of  the  effects  here  ascribed  to 
the  Messianic  Spirit.  This,  he  thinks,  must  point  to  a  later  date  than 
Isaiah,  because  the  early  prophets  do  not  derive  their  own  equipment 
from   the    Spirit,   p.   63.     In   this   last-named    opinion   Volz   sides    with 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  219 

In  the  third  place  the  Spirit  appears  as  the  source  of  the 
future  new  life  of  Israel,  especially  of  the  ethico-religious 
renewal,  also  as  the  pledge  of  divine  favor  for  the  new 
Israel,  and  as  the  author  of  a  radical  transformation  of 
physical  conditions  in  the  eschatological  era,  and  thus  becomes 
characteristic  of  the  eschatological  state  itself.  To  this  head 
belong  the  following  passages:  Is.  xxxii.  15-17,  xliv.  3,  lix. 
21  (?)  ;  Ez,  xxxvi.  27,  xxxvii.  14,  xxxix.  29.  It  will  be  ob- 
served that  in  these  passages  the  sending  of  the  Spirit  is  ex- 
pected not  from  the  Messiah  but  from  Jehovah  directly,  al- 
though the  statements  occur  in  prophecies  that  know  the  Mes- 
siah. The  emphasis  rests  on  the  initial  act  as  productive  of 
new  conditions ;  at  the  same  time  the  terms  used  show  that  the 
presence  and  working  of  the  Spirit  are  not  restricted  to  the 
first  introduction  of  the  eschatological  state  but  accompany  the 
latter  in  continuance.  The  land  or  the  nation  becomes  a  per- 
menent  receptacle  of  the  Spirit.^  An  individualizing  form  the 
promise  assumes  in  Ez.  xxxvi.  26. 

In  the  fourth  place  we  must  take  into  account  that  in  the 
Old  Testament  Spirit  appears  as  the  comprehensive  formula 
for  the  transcendental,  the  supernatural.  In  all  the  manifesta- 
tions of  the  Spirit  a  supernatural  reality  projects  itself  into 
the  ordinary  experience  of  man,  and  thus  the  sphere  whence 
these  manifestations  come  can  be  named  after  the  power  to 
which  they  are  traced.    This  is  in  agreement  with  the  twofold 

Giesebrecht,  Die  Berufshegahung  der  A.  T.-lichen  Propheten,  1897.  The 
Spirit,  he  thinks,  was  for  the  prophets  too  materialistic,  too  unethical,  too 
miraculous  to  allow  of  association  with  their  own  ideals.  We  can  here 
once  more  observe  how  the  ethical  with  the  school  to  which  this  writer 
adheres  drives  out  the  supernatural  even  where  the  two  seem  most  organi- 
cally united.  What  happened  formerly  to  the  Messiah  now  happens  to 
the  Spirit  of  the  Messiah. 

•  The  figures  used  for  the  communication  are  those  of  "  outpouring ", 
1£3K^,  pV%  niJ^J.  words  which  imply  the  imparting  of  something  that 
remains ;  also  inj  "  to  give  "  and  "  to  put  into  ",  are  found,  Ez.  xxxvi.  27 , 
xxxvii.  14.  Notice  the  verbs  expressing  permanence  in  Is.  xxxii.  16 : 
"  Then  justice  shall  dwell  in  the  wilderness,  and  righteousness  shall  abide 
in  the  fruitful  field."  According  to  Ez,  xxxix,  29  the  continuance  of  the 
favor  of  God  is  secure  to  the  people,  because  they  have  received  the 
Spirit :  "  Neither  will  I  hide  my  face  any  more  from  them :  for  I  have 
poured  out  my  Spirit  upon  the  house  of  Israel," 


220  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

aspect  of  "  the  wind  '*,  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  concrete 
force,  and  a  supernal  element.^  But  the  Spirit  stands  for 
the  supernatural  not  merely  in  so  far  as  the  latter  connotes  the 
miraculous,  but  also  in  so  far  as  it  is  sovereign  over  against 
man :  it  "  blows  where  it  listeth  ".  In  man  the  pneumatic 
awakes  the  awe  which  pertains  to  the  supernatural  and  its 
presence  exposes  to  the  same  danger.  Because  of  this  close 
association  with  the  higher  world  the  Spirit  appears  in  closest 
conjunction  with  God,  who  is  the  center  of  that  sphere.  Every 
bearer  of  the  Spirit  forms  a  link  of  connection  between  man 
and  the  higher  world.  In  the  ecstatic  state  the  Spirit  lifts  the 
prophet  into  the  supernatural  sphere  which  is  peculiarly  its 
own.  And  even  in  his  ordinary  life  the  prophet  is,  on  account 
of  his  pneumatic  character,  as  it  were  concentrated  upon  a 
higher  world,  **  he  sits  alone  because  of  Jehovah's  hand  ", 
Jer.  XV.  17.  All  this,  while  not  eschatological  in  itself,  be- 
comes of  importance  for  our  present  purpose,  because  it  is  a 
recognized  principle  in  New  Testament  teaching  that  in  one 
aspect  the  eschatological  order  of  things  is  identical  with  the 
heavenly  order  of  things  brought  to  light.  If  the  Spirit  stands 
representatively  for  the  latter,  he  will  naturally  reappear  in  the 
same  capacity  as  regards  the  former. 

In  the  apocryphal  and  pseudepigraphical  literature  and  in 
the  Rabbinical  theology  we  meet  again  most  of  these  ideas,  and 
in  one  respect  note  a  further  development  in  the  direction  of 
the  New  Testament  doctrine.  The  Messiah  becomes  bearer  of 
the  Spirit  not  merely  for  the  discharge  of  his  own  official 
functions,  but  also  for  the  purpose  of  communicating  the 
Spirit  to  others.  The  Messiah  pours  out  on  men  the  Spirit  of 
grace,  so  that  henceforth  they  walk  in  the  ways  of  God,  Test. 
Jud.  xxiv.  2.  In  "  the  Elect ",  i.  e.  the  Messiah,  "  dwells  the 
Spirit  of  wisdom,  and  the  Spirit  of  him  who  gives  under- 
standing, and  the  Spirit  of  instruction  and  power,  and  the 
Spirit  of  those  who  are  fallen  asleep  in  righteousness  ",  En. 
xlix.  3.  Thus  not  merely  the  ethical  but  also  the  escha- 
tological life  of  the  resurrection  is  derived  from  the  Messiah. 

'  Cf.  Jno.  iii.  8,  where  the  wind  comes  from  above,  out  of  the  region  of 
mystery,  and  also  Ez,  xxxvii.  9 :  "  Come  from  the  four  winds,  O  breath." 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  221 

It  will  be  observed,  however,  that  the  Spirit  does  not  become 
any  more  than  in  the  Old  Testament  the  constituent  principle 
of  the  Messiah's  Person,  he  remains  as  before  the  Spirit  of 
official  endowment.  Cf .  further  En.  Ixii.  2 ;  Test.  Lev.  xviii.  7 ; 
Test  Jud.  xxiv.  2;  Or.  Sib.  iii.  655  ff . ;  Ps.  Sol.  xyii.  37.  The 
possession  of  the  eschatological  Spirit  is  ascribed  to  the  future 
saints  also  irrespective  of  Messianic  mediation.  It  is  in  them  a 
Spirit  of  life,  En.  Ixi.  7,^  a  Spirit  of  faith,  of  wisdom,  of  pa- 
tience, of  mercy,  of  judgment,  of  peace  and  of  benevolence, 
En.  Ixi.  II ;  a  Spirit  of  eternal  life.  Or.  Sib.  iii.  771 ;  a  Spirit  of 
holiness  pertaining  to  paradise  and  named  in  connection  with 
the  tree  of  life.  Test.  Lev.  xviii.  11.  The  Rabbinical  Theology 
also  brings  the  Spirit  in  connection  with  the  resurrection: 
"  Holiness  leads  to  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Holy  Spirit  leads  to 
the  resurrection ",  R.  Pinhas  b.  Ja'ir  in  B.  Aboda  s.  20" 
(quoted  by  Volz  p.  1 14).^  In  comparison  with  the  Old  Testa- 
ment period  this  thought  of  the  Spirit's  eschatological  opera- 
tion appears  more  developed  and  receives  greater  emphasis,  a 
feature  by  some  explained  from  the  fact,  that  in  the  later 
times  the  present  activity  of  the  Spirit  was  felt  to  be  rare 
or  entirely  in  abeyance.  What  the  present  did  not  offer  was 
expected  from  the  future.  None  the  less  the  fourth  line  of 
thought  is  as  prominent  as  in  the  canonical  literature.  The  im- 
pression that  the  period  of  Judaism  was  to  itself  an  unpneu- 
matic  period  is  apt  to  be  based  on  the  comparison  of  these 
times  with  the  immediately  following  Spirit-filled  days  of  the 
early  Christian  church,  rather  than  on  an  estimate  of  the 
period  considered  in  itself.  The  "  wise  men  "  speak  of  them- 
selves as  "  divine  ",  "  immortal  ",  as  the  prophets  of  their  age; 
Sap.  Sol.  vii.  27,  viii.  13;  Sir.  xxiv.  33.  The  Apocalyptic 
writers  also  feel  themselves  men  of  a  higher  divine  rank,  in- 

'  Sokolowski,  Die  Begriffe  Geist  und  Leben  bei  Paulus,  1903,  pp.  201  ff.  de- 
nies that  pre-Christian  Judaism  associates  the  Spirit  with  the  resurrec- 
tion or  the  resurrection-Hfe.  On  the  other  side  cf.  Slotemaker  de  Bruine, 
De  Eschatologische  Voorstellingen  in  I  en  II  Corinthe,  1894,  p.  57  and 
Volz,  p.  114. 

*  Hence  it  is  said  that  the  people  of  the  time  of  the  deluge  cannot 
attain  unto  the  resurrection,  because  they  are  deprived  of  the  Spirit  (Gen. 
vi.  3)   Sanh.  xi,  3. 


222  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 

itiated  into  mysteries  hidden  even  from  the  angels,  capable  of 
forecasting  the  future,  the  authors  of  inspired  writings,  En. 
xiv.  3,  xxxvii.  3,  Ixxxii.  2,  xci.  i,  xcii.  i ;  4  Ezra,  xiv.  18  ff. 
46;  Slav.  En.  xviii.  8,  xxiv.  3.  We  also  read  that  the  pneu- 
matic state  of  these  men  assumed  the  specific  form  of  a  trans- 
lation into  the  heavenly  sphere^^  It  is,  however,  difficult  to 
determine  how  much  in  all  this  was  actual,  sincere  experience, 
and  how  much  was  artificially  conceived,  or  part  of  the  tra- 
ditional imagery  of  which  all  these  writers  availed  themselves. 
The  fact  that  the  Pneuma  is  most  frequently  associated  with 
the  charisma  of  wisdom  and  general  ethical  virtue  may  be  an 
indication  that  the  specifically  supernatural  did  no  longer  at- 
test itself  strongly  to  the  consciousness  of  the  period  as  a  pres- 
ent possession. 

In  the  Gospels  the  eschatological  aspect  of  the  Spirit  is  not 
much  in  evidence.  This,  however,  is  but  part  of  the  wider 
observation  that  the  Spirit  in  general  remains  in  the  back- 
ground. It  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  high  Christology  of  the 
Synoptical  writers  that  they  do  not  refer  to  the  pneumatic 
equipment  of  Jesus  in  explanation  of  the  supernatural  char- 
acter of  his  Person,  and  even  make  comparatively  little  of  it  in 
explanation  of  the  supernatural  character  of  his  work.  Ob- 
viously the  Evangelists  (Synoptics  as  well  as  John)  had  a 
higher,  ontological  aspect  of  the  Person  of  Jesus  in  mind  by 
which  to  account  for  the  supernatural  phenomena.  ^^  The 
Baptist  makes  the  Holy  Spirit  the  element  wherein  Jesus  will 
baptize,  and  thus  the  distinctive  element  of  the  coming  king- 
dom, Mk.  i.  8.     (=  Mt.  iii.  11  :^Lk.  iii.  16). ^^    This  implies 

"  The  later  Jewish  tradition  knows  of  four  Rabbis  who  penetrated  into 
Paradise,  B.  Chagiga  U^-is",  quoted  by  Volz  p.  118.  On  the  other  hand, 
cf.  the  statement  Tanchuma  114':  "In  this  world  I  impart  wisdom 
through  my  Spirit,  hereafter,  I  will  myself  impart  wisdom." 

"  Cf .  Joh.  Weiss,  Das  dlteste  Evangelium,  1903,  pp.  48,  49 :  "  In 
Mark  the  representation  that  the  Spirit  is  an  equipment  for  Jesus'  activity, 
receives  very  little  prominence." 

"  For  the  combination  i»  irveij/mri  ayiciJ  kuI  trvpl  in  Mt.  and  Lk.  cf. 
an  interesting  parallel  in  the  statement  of  the  Avesta  (quoted  by  Volz  p. 
176) :  "  Mazdah  will  prepare  the  recompense  of  blessedness  and  damna- 
tion through  the  holy  spirit  and  fire."  This  favors  the  interpretation  of 
the  fire  as  an  instrument  of  judgment. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL  223 

that  the  Messiah  imparts  the  Spirit.  But  in  the  Fourth  Gospel 
the  Baptist  goes  one  step  farther  by  bringing  this  baptism  to  be 
conferred  by  Jesus  into  connection  with  the  descent  of  the 
Spirit  upon  Jesus,  which  is  the  first  intimation  in  the  New 
Testament,  that  the  Spirit  will  rest  on  the  Messiah  and  the 
members  of  his  kingdom,  passing  over  from  him  to  them,  i.  33. 
As  the  Spirit  of  the  Messiah  the  Spirit  appears  in  the  accounts 
of  the  birth  of  Jesus,  of  the  baptism  and  of  the  temptation; 
Cf.  also  Mt.  iv.  14.^^  Our  Lord  himself  refers  to  the 
Spirit  in  this  capacity  in  the  sayings  of  Mt.  xii.  28  (^Lk. 
xi.  20)  and  Lk.  iv.  18.  Of  the  Spirit  as  communicable  to 
the  disciples  in  the  kingdom  speak  Mt.  x.  19  (=Lk.  xii.  12) 
and  Lk.  xi.  13.  It  will  be  noted  that  here  the  giving  of  the 
Spirit  is  ascribed  to  God,  not  to  the  Messiah.  To  the  closing 
chapters  in  John  reference  has  been  made  above.  The  Spirit, 
while  predominant  in  this  intermediate  period,  is  not  confined 
to  it,  and  the  period,  as  well  as  the  Spirit's  operation  in  it,  are 
conceived  as  semi-eschatological.  Both  the  Father  and  Jesus 
send  the  Spirit,  xiv.  16,  26,  xv.  26,  xvi.  7,  xx.  22.  In  the 
earlier  part  of  the  Gospel  the  Messianic  Spirit  appears  in  i.  33, 
iii.  34,  vi.  63 ;  the  future  Spirit  in  vii.  39 ;  the  Spirit  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  supernatural,  heavenly  world  in  iii.  3,  5,  6,  8. 
We  have  already  seen  that  in  the  early  Petrine  teaching, 
traceable  in  Acts,  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  is,  in  depend- 
ence on  the  Joel-prophecy,  represented  as  belonging  to  "  the 
last  days",  ii.  17.^^  It  does  not,  however,  follow  from  this, 
that  the  pneumatic  phenomena  appeared  to  the  early  disciples 
in  the  light  of  eschatological  symptoms  exclusively.  It  is  evi- 
dent from  the  whole  tenor  of  the  narrative  that  the  possession 
of  the  Spirit  had  a  subjective  value  for  the  disciples  them- 
selves. It  is  the  sign  of  acceptance  with  God,  of  participation 
in  the  privileges  of  the  Christian  state,  x.  45,  47.  It  is  there- 
fore represented  as  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise,  which  ful- 
filment Christ  after  his  ascension  received  from  the  Father, 

^'Cf.  also  Acts  i.  2,  iv.  27,  x.  38. 

"Luke  in  his  own  narrative  does  not  refer  to  the  Spirit  from  this  point 
of  view,  but  speaks  of  him  only  in  connection  with  the  work  of  missions. 
Harnack  appeals  to  this  in  proof  of  the  accurate  historical  coloring  of  the 
Petrine  speeches  by  the  author  of  Acts. 


224 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 


i.  4,  ii.  33.**^  It  signalizes  the  present  no  less  than  it  portends 
the  future.  Still  the  characteristic  feature,  that  the  present 
enjoyment  of  the  Spirit's  gifts  is  an  anticipation  of  the  world 
to  come  seems  to  be  wanting.  The  Spirit's  work  is  prophetic 
and  at  the  same  time  symptomatic  of  salvation,  but  these  two 
ideas  are  not  as  yet  organically  connected,  the  intermediate 
thought  which  would  explain  both  features,  viz.  that  the  final 
salvation  consists  in  the  full  endowment  with  the  Spirit,  finds 
no  expression.  The  problems  of  the  sphere  to  which  the 
operations  of  the  Spirit  belong  and  of  the  personal  relation  of 
the  Spirit  to  the  exalted  Messiah,  can  be  more  satisfactorily 
dealt  with  at  a  subsequent  stage  in  comparison  with  the  Pauline 
teaching  on  these  points. 

Coming  to  Paul  himself  we  notice  first  that  the  Apostle  ex- 
plicitly links  the  Christian  possession  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Old 
Testament  eschatological  promise.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
presence  and  operation  of  the  Spirit  in  the  Old  Testament  are 
denied.^^  Cf.  Acts  xxviii.  25;  Rom.  vii.  14;  i  Cor.  x.  3,  4; 
Gal.  iv.  29  and  i  Tim.  iv.  i.  These  things,  however,  so  far  as 
they  do  not  relate  to  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures,  were  of  a 
typical  nature  and  therefore  took  place  in  the  physical  sphere. 
The  true  era  of  the  Spirit's  activity  was  still  outstanding.  The 
two  aspects  of  the  Messianic  Person,  that  Kara  irvev/xa  as  well 
as  that  Kara  adpKa  were  part  of  the  prophetic  promise  in  the 
Holy  Scriptures  Rom.   i.   1-4.     The   Spirit  is  an  object  of 

"Harnack,  Die  Apostelgeschichte,  1908,  p.  109  thinks  that  in  ii.  33  the 
promise  of  the  Spirit  (not  the  promised  Spirit)  is  represented  as  having 
been  first  given  to  Jesus  after  his  ascension.  But  i.  4  shows  that  this  is 
a  mistake,  for  here  Jesus,  before  the  ascension,  speaks  of  "the  promise 
of  the  Father "  for  which  they  are  to  wait  at  Jerusalem.  And  in  the 
Gospel  xxiv.  49  Jesus  says :  "  I  send  forth  the  promise  of  my  Father 
upon  you".  In  all  three  passages  irrayyeKla  is=:"the  thing  promised", 
cf.  Gal.  iii.  14  where  the  same  phrase  ivayyeKla  toO  irvedfuiToi  occurs  in 
the  same  sense.     (For  the  variant  reading  see  below.) 

"2  Cor.  iv.  13  will  also  belong  here,  if  t6  axnb  irvevfia  be  construed  with 
icotA  rb  yeypafjLfi^voy  i.  e.  the  same  Spirit  of  faith  as  finds  expression  in  the 
word  of  the  Psalmist.  But  probably  Paul  means  that  the  same  Spirit 
is  in  himself  as  in  the  Corinthians,  although  death  works  in  him,  life  in 
them,  V.  12.  Cf.  Gloel,  Der  Heilige  Geist  in  der  HeilsverkUndigung  des 
Paulus,  1888,  p.  87. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  225 

iirayyeXia,  Gal.  iii.  14;  Eph.  i  1 3.  While  in  the  latter  passage 
Paul  probably  has  in  mind  the  prophetic  predictions  of  the  out- 
pouring of  the  Spirit,  the  context  shows  that  in  Gal.  3  he 
thinks  of  the  evXoyia  given  to  Abraham  as  relating  to  the 
Spirit.i^ 

We  first  examine  the  statements  which  introduce  the  Spirit 
in  a  strictly  eschatological  capacity,  as  connected  with  the  fu- 
ture state.  The  Spirit  and  the  resurrection  belong  together, 
and  that  in  a  twofold  sense.  On  the  one  hand  the  resurrection 
as  an  act  is  derived  from  the  Spirit,  on  the  other  hand  the 
resurrection-state  is  represented  as  in  permanence  dependent 
on  the  Spirit,  as  a  pneumatic  state.  In  Rom.  viii.  11  it  is 
affirmed  that  God,  Sea  tov  ivoLKOvvro^  avrov  irvevtiaro^  (or  to  ev- 
oLKovv  avTov  7rvevfu>a)  iv  vfjilv  shall  give  life  to  their  mortal 
bodies.  In  verse  10  the  body  and  the  Spirit  are  contrasted :  the 
former  is  dead  on  account  of  sin,  the  latter  is  life  on  account 
of  righteousness.  Still  irvevfjLa  is  here  not  the  human 
spirit,  psychologically  conceived;  it  is  the  divine  Pneuma  in 
its  close  identification  with  the  believer's  person.  Hence  in 
verse  1 1  there  is  substituted  for  the  simple  to  irvevfia  the  fuller 
phrase  "  the  Spirit  of  him  that  raised  up  Jesus  from  the  dead  ". 
The  fact  that  God  is  thus  designated  is  of  importance  for  the 
argument.  What  God  did  for  Jesus,  he  will  do  for  the  be- 
liever also.^^.  It  is  presupposed  by  the  Apostle,  though  not 
expressed,  that  God  raised  Jesus  through  the  Spirit.     Hence 

"  So  correctly  Gloel  pp.  96-97  against  Meyer  who  finds  the  content  of 
the  eUXoyla  in  justification.  But  justification  is  proven  from  Abraham's 
case  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  indispensable  prerequisite  of  receiving  the 
eiXoyla  .  The  latter  =K\'npopoiJ.la  v,  18,  and  Rom.  iv.  13  shows  that  with 
reference  to  the  KXvpovofMla  justification  is  a  means  to  an  end.  Or  eUXoyla 
=:  ^7]v  vss.  10,  12  and  life  is  based  on  justification,  Rom.  i.  17.  The 
identification  of  the  Spirit  and  eiXoyla  is  also  found  in  Is.  xliv.  3.  If,  with 
Zahn,  on  the  basis  of  D.  G  d  g  and  some  patristic  authorities,  we  read  in 
Gal.  iii.  14  ei\oylav  rod  irpeifiaros,  we  obtain  an  explicit  identification  of 
the  blessing  and  the  Spirit. 

"  It  should  be  noticed  how  significantly  Paul  varies  in  this  connection 
the  name  of  Christ.  First  he  speaks  of  the  raising  of  Jesus  from  the  dead. 
Here  the  Saviour  comes  under  consideration  as  to  his  own  Person.  Then 
he  speaks  of  the  raising  of  Christ  Jesus  from  the  dead.  Here  the  Saviour 
is  considered  as  the  Messiah  in  his  representative  capacity,  which  furnishes 
a  guarantee  that  his  resurrection  must  repeat  itself  in  that  of  the  others. 


I 


226  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

the  argument  from  the  analogy  between  Jesus  and  the  believer 
is  further  strengthened  by  the  consideration,  that  the  instru- 
ment through  which  God  accomplished  this  in  Jesus  is  al- 
ready present  in  the  readers.  The  idea  that  the  Spirit  works 
instrumentally  in  the  resurrection  is  thus  plainly  implied,  al- 
together apart  from  the  question  whether  the  reading  Bid  c. 
Gen.  or  Bid  c.  Ace.  be  preferred  in  verse  1 1'.^®  As  to  1 1*"  itself, 
when  the  textus  receptus  is  followed,  this  part  of  the  verse  will 
only  repeat  in  more  explicit  form  the  thought  already  implied 
in  ii':  If  the  Spirit  of  God  who  raised  Jesus  dwells  in  you, 
then  God  will  make  the  indwelling  Spirit  accomplish  for  you 
what  he  did  for  Jesus  in  the  latter's  resurrection.  On  the 
other  reading  we  may  paraphrase  as  follows:  If  the  Spirit 
of  God  who  raised  Jesus  dwells  in  you,  then  God  will  create 
for  that  Spirit  the  same  bodily  organisation,  that  he  created 
for  him  in  the  resurrection-body  of  Christ.  In  the  latter  case 
there  is  added  to  the  idea  of  the  Spirit  as  the  instrumental 
cause  of  the  resurrection-act,  the  further  idea  of  the  Spirit 
as  the  permanent  basis  of  the  resurrection-state. 

A  second  passage  is  Gal.  vi.  8.  Between  verse  7  and  verse  8 
the  figure  varies,  inasmuch  as  in  the  former  the  correspondence 
between  the  seed  and  the  harvest,  in  the  latter  the  corre- 
spondence between  the  soil  and  the  harvest  is  affirmed.  But 
the  idea  of  correspondence  is  common  to  both  forms  of  the 
figure.  The  reaping  of  eternal  life  follows  from  the  sowing 
into  the  Spirit  because  the  Spirit  and  eternal  life  belong  to- 
gether through  identity  of  content,  just  as  the  adp^— soil  is 
reproduced  in  the  <^^o/oa~harvest,  because  the  adp^  is  in- 
herently and  necessarily  the  source  of  corruption.  The  phrase 
^(OTf  auoviofi ,  with  Paul  (in  distinction  from  John)  always 
strictly  eschatological,  proves  that  the  reference  is  to  the  day 
of  judgment.  The  future  depCa-ei  is  chronological.  We, 
therefore,  obtain  the  thought  that  the  heavenly  life,  regarded 
as  a  reward  for  the  believer,  will  essentially  consist  in  pneuma, 
which,  of  course,  extends  to  its  bodily  form,  although  it  is 

**The  reading  of  the  textus  receptus  S16.  c.  Gen.  rests  on  K  ,  A,  C, 
Clem.  Al. ;  the  other  is  supported  by  B,  D,  E,  F,  G,  Orig.  Iren.  Tert.  and 
the  Old-Syriac  and  Old-Latin  versions.  Cf.  Gloel,  pp.  362  ff.,  who  de- 
cides in  favor  of  the  latter. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  227 

not  confined  to  this.^^  Nothing  is  here  said  of  the  act  of  the 
resurrection  and  its  dependence  on  the  Spirit.  It  is  the  harvest 
as  a  product,  not  the  harvesting  as  a  process,  of  which  the 
pneumatic  character  is  affirmed. 

It  might  be  said,  however,  that  in  these  two  passages  the 
thought  has  its  point  of  departure  in  the  soteriological  concep- 
tion of  the  Spirit  as  a  present  factor  in  the  Christian  Hfe  and 
from  here  moves  forward  to  the  future,  so  that  the  eschat- 
ological  function  of  the  Spirit  would  be  a  doctrinal  inference, 
rather  than  something  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  Spirit 
itself.^^  We  therefore  turn  to  a  third  passage,  which  clearly 
starts  from  the  eschatological  end  of  the  line  and  looks  back- 
ward from  this  into  the  present  life.  This  is  2  Cor.  v.  5. 
Here  Paul  declares  that  God  has  prepared  him  for  the  eternal 
state  in  the  new  heavenly  body,  as  may  be  seen  from  this  that 
he  gave  him  the  appaficbv  rod  TrvevfiaTOf; .  The  appa/Scov  con- 
consists  in  the  Spirit; ''  of  the  Spirit  "  is  epexegetical,  just  as  in 
Gal.  iii.  14  the  eTrayyeXia  rov  7rv6v/JLaTo<i  means  the  promised 
thing  consisting  in  the  Spirit. ^^  But  the  Spirit  possesses  this 
significance  of  an  appa^cov  because  it  is  a  preliminary  instal- 
ment of  what  in  its  fulness  will  be  received  hereafter.  The  an- 
alogous conception  of  the  aTrapxv  tov  irvevfiarofiy  Rom.  viii.  23, 
proves  this.2^     The  figure  of  the  appafia>v  itself  implies  this 

^For  this  aspect  of  the  resurrection  cf.  i  Cor.  xv.  30-32,  where  it 
appears  as  a  recompense  for  the  KivSweiiiv  and  daily  dirodv/iffKeLv  :  "  what 
doth  it  profit  me?"  and  v.  58:  "be  ye  steadfast.  .  .  .  forasmuch  as  ye 
know  that  your  labor  is  not  in  vain  in  the  Lord." 

^This  is  the  ordinary  way  of  representing  the  matter.  Even  Swete  in 
his  recent  book  The  Holy  Spirit  in  the  New  Testament,  1910,  falls  into 
it,  when  he  puts  the  question  as  to  the  eschatological  significance  of  the 
Spirit  in  this  form :  "  Is  the  work  of  the  Spirit  preparatory  only,  or  is 
it  permanent,  extending  to  the  world  to  come  ?  "  p.  353.  That  a  move- 
ment of  thought  in  the  opposite  direction  may  also  have  been  familiar  to 
the  Apostle  does  not  seem  to  suggest  itself  to  the  author. 

^^In  Eph.  i.  14  on  the  other  hand  the  appa^dv  rrjs  KK-npovofxias  is  the 
Spirit  which  pledges  the  inheritance,  so  that  the  construction  is  different, 
while  the  thought  is  the  same;  the  pledge  consists  in  the  Spirit  and 
assures  of  the  inheritance. 

^  Another  analogous  conception,  that  of  the  <x<l>payls,  does  not  express  the 
identity  of  the  pledge  and  the  thing  pledged,  cf.  2  Cor.  i.  22;  Eph.  i.  13^ 
iv.  30. 


228  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 

relation  no  less  than  that  of  the  airapxH')  for  it  means  "  money 
which  in  purchases  is  given  as  a  pledge  that  the  full  amount  will 
be  subsequently  paid  ".^^  In  this  instance,  therefore,  the  Spirit 
is  viewed  as  pertaining  specifically  to  the  future  life,  nay  as 
constituting  the  substantial  make-up  of  this  life,  and  the  pres- 
ent possession  of  the  Spirit  by  the  believer  is  regarded  in  the 
light  of  an  anticipation.  The  Spirit's  proper  sphere  is  accord- 
ing to  this  the  world  to  come ;  from  there  he  projects  himself 
into  the  present,, and  becomes  a  prophecy  of  himself  in  his 
eschatological  operation.  ^^ 

Undoubtedly  more  statements  to  the  same  effect  would  be 
found,  but  for  the  circumstance  that  it  was  more  natural  for 
the  Apostle  to  express  the  idea  in  connection  with  the  eschat- 
ological life  of  Christ,  as  already  a  present  reality,  than  in 
connection  with  the  eschatological  state  of  believers,  which 
still  lies  in  the  future.  We,  therefore,  inquire  in  the  second 
place  to  what  extent  eschatological  side-lights  fall  on  the 
resurrection  and  the  resurrection-life  of  Christ.  We  begin 
with  Rom.  i.  4.  Here,  we  read  that  Christ  was  opiadeU  t>to9 
Beov  iv  Swdfiei  Karh,  irvevfia  dyicoavvrj^i  ej  avaaTaaeco^  vcKpayv. 
The  statement  stands  in  close  parallelism  to  verse  3  rov  yevo- 
fjkivov  i/c  (TirepixaTO^  AavelS  Karh  adpKa.  The  following  mem- 
bers correspond  to  each  other  in  the  two  clauses : 
yevofievo^  opLadei^ 

Kara  (rdpKa  Kara  Trveufia  ayLwavvrj^ 

etc  airipiiaro^  AaveiS  ef  apaa-rda-eay;  vcKpcov. 

**  So  Suidas  sub  voce. 

*  Charles,  Teichmann  and  others  assume  that  the  derivation  of  the  resur- 
rection from  the  Spirit  is  a  later  development  in  the  mind  of  Paul,  that  his 
earliest  eschatology,  represented  by  i  Thess.,  was  un-pneumatic,  which  in- 
volves that  at  this  stage  he  expected  the  resurrection  of  the  original  body 
unchanged.  But  this  is  an  argument  e  silentio  and  not  even  quite  that. 
To  meet  the  difficulty  of  the  Thessalonians  the  fact  of  the  resurrection, 
not  its  mode,  or  the  nature  of  the  resurrection-life,  had  to  be  emphasized. 
Besides,  the  pneumatic  character  of  the  resurrection  is  clearly  implied  in 
Chap.  iv.  14,  for  if  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  jointly  considered 
furnish  the  guarantee  of  the  believer's  resurrection,  this  must  be  under- 
stood on  the  principle  that  in  Christ's  experience  that  of  the  Christian  is 
prefigured.  But  of  such  reproduction  of  the  experience  of  Christ  in  be- 
lievers the  Spirit  is  with  Paul  everywhere  the  mediating  cause.  Cf. 
also  the  phrase    ol   ptKpol  iv   Xpurr^,  which  has  a  pneumatic  background. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  229 

The  reference  is  not  to  two  coexisting  sides  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  Saviour,  but  to  two  successive  stages  in  his  life: 
there  was  first  a  yeveadac  Kara  adpKa,  then  a  opiadrjvai  Kara 
TTvevfia.  The  two  prepositional  phrases  have  adverbial  force: 
they  describe  the  mode  of  the  process,  yet  so  as  to  throw 
emphasis  rather  on  the  result  than  on  the  initial  act:  Christ 
came  into  being  as  to  his  sarkic  existence,  and  he  was  intro- 
duced by  o/3to-fto9  into  his  pneumatic  existence.  The  opi^eiv 
IS  not  an  abstract  determination,  but  an  effectual  appointment ; 
Paul  obviously  avoids  the  repetition  of  yevo/ievov  not  for 
rhetorical  reasons  only,  but  because  it  might  have  suggested, 
even  before  the  reading  of  the  whole  sentence  could  cor- 
rect it,  the  misunderstanding  that  at  the  resurrection  the 
divine  sonship  of  Christ  as  such  first  originated,  whereas  the 
Apostle  merely  meant  to  affirm  this  late  temporal  origin  of  the 
divine  sonship  iv  Swdfiec,  the  sonship  as  such  reaching 
back  into  the  state  of  preexistence.  By  the  twofold  /caret  the 
mode  of  each  state  of  existence  is  contrasted,  by  the  twofold 
itc  the  origin  of  each.  Thus  the  existence  kutu  adp/ca  origi- 
nated "  from  the  seed  of  David  ",  the  existence  kut^  irvevfia 
originated  "  out  of  resurrection  from  the  dead  ".  The  point 
of  importance  for  our  present  purpose  lies  in  this  last  con- 
trast. How  can  resurrection  from  the  dead  be  the  counter- 
part of  an  issue  from  the  seed  of  David?  There  are  in  the 
Pauline  world  of  thought  but  two  answers  to  this  question, 
and  both  will  have  to  be  combined  in  the  present  instance. 
The  resurrection  is  to  Paul  the  beginning  of  a  new  status  of 
sonship  :2^  hence,  as  Jesus  derived  his  sonship  Kara  adpica 
from  the  seed  of  David,  he  can  be  said  to  have  derived  his 
divine-sonship-in-power  from  the  resurrection.  The  implica- 
tion is  that  the  one  working  in  the  resurrection  is  God:  it  is 

^  Cf.  Rom.  viii.  23  where  vlodeala  is  equivalent  to  dTroXi^rpwa-tj  tov  a-iifiaros. 
In  V.  29  the  elKcbv  of  Christ  unto  conformity  to  which  believers  have  been 
predestinated  is  the  eUdv  of  sonship  (rod  vlov  airov  and  "  that  he  might  be 
the  first-born  among  many  brethren  ")  and  it  is  eschatologically  conceived 
for  the  tlK(av  looks  forward  to  the  id6^a<rev  at  the  end  of  the  catena. 
But  the  thought  of  eschatological  sonship,  and  that  specifically  through 
the  resurrection,  is  also  met  with  in  our  Lord's  teaching,  cf.  Mt.  v.  9, 
xiii.  43;  Lk,  XX.  36. 


230 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 


his  seed  that  supernaturally  begets  the  higher  sonship.  And 
in  all  probability  the  Genitive  dyLoxrvprff:  which  is  added  to 
"  Spirit ",  is  meant  as  a  designation  of  God  from  the  point  of 
view  of  his  specific  deity,  sharply  distinguishing  him  as  such 
from  David.  Still,  all  this  might  have  been  expressed  by 
Paul  writing  "  effectually  appointed  according  to  the  Spirit  of 
Holiness  the  Son  in  power  of  God  who  raises  the  dead  ".  That, 
instead  of  doing  this,  he  writes  ef  avaaTciaeoxi  vexpoju  must  be 
explained  from  avsecond  motive.  He  wished  to  contrast  the 
resurrection-process  in  a  broad  generic  way  with  the  processes 
of  this  natural  life;  the  resurrection  is  characteristic  of  the 
beginning  of  a  new  order  of  things,  as  sarkic  birth  is  character- 
istic of  an  older  order  of  things.  What  stands  before  the 
Apostle's  mind  is  the  contrast  between  the  two  aeons,  for  it 
was  a  familiar  thought  to  the  Jewish  theology  that  the  future 
aeon  has  its  characteristic  beginning  in  the  great  resurrection- 
act.  This  also  will  explain  why  in  ef  avaa-Tda-eco^  vexpayv  both 
nouns  are  anarthrous.  Paul  is  not  thinking  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ  as  an  event,  but  of  what  happened  to  Christ  in 
its  generic  qualitative  capacity,  as  an  epoch  partaking  of  a 
strictly  eschatological  nature.  From  resurrection-begin- 
nings, from  an  eschatological  genesis  dates  the  pneumatic  state 
of  Christ's  glory  which  is  described  as  a  sonship  of  God 
iv  Bvvd/x€L.^'^ 

^For  the  justification  of  the  above  exegesis,  which  cannot  here  be 
given  in  detail,  cf.,  besides  the  commentaries,  especially  Gloel,  pp.  113-117; 
Sokolowski,  pp.  56-62.  According  to  our  view  the  pneuma  here  spoken 
of  begins  with  the  resurrection.  The  other  exegesis  dates  it  back  either 
to  the  state  of  preexistence,  so  that  it  becomes  the  element  which  con- 
stituted the  personality  of  the  Son  of  God  in  that  state,  being  identical 
with  his  sonship,  or  to  his  earthly  life.  Both  these  variations  of  the 
other  view  fall  back,  each  after  its  own  fashion,  into  the  error  of  making 
the  ffdp^  and  the  rrvevfm  two  coexistent  component  parts  in  the  Person  of 
Christ  instead  of  two  successive  states  in  the  life  of  Christ.  The  main 
objections  to  thi^  exegesis  are:  i.)  It  would  restrict  the  trdp^  spoken 
of  to  the  body,  because  Spirit  is  already  psychologically  conceived  and 
thus  takes  the  place  of  the  immaterial  element.  2.)  It  is  compelled  to 
take  the  two  /cord  clauses  in  a  different  sense;  the  yep4<r0ai  Kard.  trdpKa  means 
a  genesis  according  to  the  <r<£p^  which  first  introduces  Christ  into  the  <r<£/)f , 
whereas  in  the  opurdrjvai  ford  trpeOfia  the  Spirit  would  appear  as  the  pre- 
existent  norm,  in  accordance  with  which  the   dpl^eiv  took  place :  a  begin- 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  231 

In  I  Cor.  XV.  42-50  the  Apostle  contrasts  the  two  bodies 
which  belong  to  the  pre-eschatological  and  the  eschatological 
state  respectively.  The  former  is  characterized  as  yfrvxi'fcdp , 
the  latter  as  7rvevfjLaTi/c6v.  Here  therefore,  as  regards  the  body, 
the  eschatological  state  is  the  state  in  which  the  Pneuma  rules, 
impressing  upon  the  body  its  threefold  characteristic  of 
a(f>6apaLa^  86^a^  hvvafiL<;  (verses  42,  43).  And  over  against 
this,  and  preceding  it,  stands  the  "  psychical  "  body  character- 
ized by  <t)dopd,  aTLfjLiaj  and  aaOeveia.  The  proximate  reference  is 
to  the  body  and  the  contrast  is  between  the  body  in  the  state 
of  sin  and  the  body  in  the  resurrection-state.  It  will  be 
noticed,  however,  that  in  verses  45,  46  the  Apostle  generalizes, 
the  antithesis  so  that  it  no  longer  concerns  the  body  exclus- 
ively, but  the  whole  state  of  man,  and  at  the  same  time  en- 
larges the  one  term  of  the  contrast,  that  relating  to  the 
pre-eschatological  period,  so  as  to  make  it  cover  no  longer  the 
reign  of  sin,  but  tfie  order  of  things  established  in  creation. 
To  TTvevfjiaTiKov  and  to  yjrvxt'Kov  in  verse  46  are  generalizing 
expressions,  after  which  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  supply 
a&fia  ;  they  designate  the  successive  reign  of  two  compre- 
hensive principles  in  history,  two  successive  world-orders,  a 
first  and  a  second  creation,  beginning  each  with  an  Adam  of 
its  own.^^     Even  apart  from  sin  these  two  stand  related  to 

ning-to-be-  Kara  adpKa  is  contrasted  with  a  beginning  to  be  something  else 
than  pneuma  in  harmony  with  a  given  pneuma.  Gloel  himself  acknowl- 
edges this  difficulty  on  p.  115,  note  i. 

The  above  interpretation  does  not,  of  course,  imply  that  Paul  denied 
the  presence  of  a  pneumatic  element  in  the  pre-resurrection  life  of  Jesus, 
in  other  words  that  he  denied  the  supernatural  conception  and  the  equip- 
ment with  the  Spirit  at  baptism.  Precisely,  because  he  speaks  of  the 
pneumatic  state  in  the  absolute  eschatological  sense,  he  could  disregard 
in  this  connection,  the  twofold  supernatural  equipment  just  named,  for 
the  reason  that  it  did  not  give  rise  to  a  state  iv  dwd/xei  kotA  irvevfia  such 
as  characterizes  the  life  of  the  risen  Christ.  He  could  equally  well  say 
here  that  Christ  became  Kark  irvevna  at  the  resurrection,  as  he  can  say  in 
I  Cor.  XV.  45  that  Christ  at  the  resurrection  became  a  life-giving  Spirit. 
As  above  stated,  the  emphasis  rests  not  on  the  initial  act  of  the  resur- 
rection but  on  the  resulting  state.  In  regard  to  the  act  as  such  Paul 
would  not  have  denied  that  the  entrance  of  Jesus  upon  the  trdp^  was 
likewise  /card  vvevixa . 

^  The  question  why  Paul,  after  having  up  to  v.  43   (incl.)  constructed 


l 


232  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

each  other,  as  the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  This  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  contrast  e/c  77)?  and  ef  ovpavov.  When  it  is 
said  that  the  second  man  is  from  heaven,  this  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  original  provenience  of  Christ  from  heaven;  the 
cf  ovpavov  does  not  imply  a  "  coming  "  from  heaven,  no 
more  than  the  e/c  7»}9  implies  a  coming  of  Adam  from  the 
earth  at  the  first  creation.  To  refer  e'f  ovpavov  to  the  coming 
of  Christ  out  of  the  state  of  preexistence  at  his  incarnation 

his  whole  argument  on  the  basis  of  a  comparison  between  the  body  of 
sin  and  the  body  of  the  resurrection,  substitutes  from  v.  44  on,  for  the 
body  of  sin,  the  body  of  creation,  is  both  a  difficult  and  interesting  one. 
The  answer  cannot  be  found  by  ascribing  to  him  the  view  that  the 
creation-body  and  the  body  of  sin  are  identical,  in  other  words  that  the 
evil  predicates  of  <l>dopd  ,  drifjUa,  dxTdtvela  enumerated  in  v.  42  belong  to  the 
body  in  virtue  of  creation.  Paul  teaches  too  plainly  elsewhere  that  these 
things  came  into  the  world  through  sin.  The  proper  solution  seems  to 
be  to  us  the  following :  The  Apostle  was  intent  upon  showing  that  in  the 
plan  of  God  from  the  outset  provision  was  made  for  a  higher  kind  of 
body  than  that  of  our  present  experience.  From  the  abnormal  body  of 
sin  no  inference  can  be  drawn  as  to  the  existence  of  another  kind  of 
body.  The  abnormal  and  the  eschatological  are  not  so  logically  correlated 
that  the  one  can  be  postulated  from  the  other.  But  the  world  of  creation 
and  the  world  of  eschatology  are  thus  correlated,  the  one  points  forward 
to  the  other;  on  the  principle  of  typology  the  first  Adam  prefigures  the 
second  Adam,  the  psychical  body,  the  pneumatic  body  (cf.  Rom.  v.  14). 
The  statement  of  v.  44"  is  meant  not  as  an  assertion,  but  as  an  argu- 
ment :  if  there  exists  the  one  kind  of  body,  there  exists  the  other  kind  also. 
This  explains  why  the  quotation  from  Gen.  ii.  7,  which  relates  only  to  the 
psychical  state,  can  yet  be  treated  by  Paul  as  proving  both,  and  as  war- 
ranting the  subjoined  proposition:  "The  last  Adam  became  a  life-giving 
Spirit."  The  quotation  proves  this,  because  the  psychical  as  such  is 
typical  of  the  pneumatic,  the  first  creation  of  the  second,  the  world  that 
now  is  of  the  world  to  come.  This  disposes  of  the  view  that  Paul  meant 
to  include  v.  45''  in  the  quotation,  the  latter  being  taken  from  Gen.  i.  27 
(man's  creation  in  the  image  of  God),  which  would  then  rest  on  the 
Philonic  and  older  speculation  of  a  twofold  creation,  first  of  the  ideal, 
then  of  the  empirical  man.  According  to  this  speculation  the  ideal  man 
is  created  first,  the  empirical  man  afterwards,  as  Gen.  i  comes  before 
Gen.  2.  Paul  affirms  the  opposite :  not  the  pneumatic  is  first,  but  the  psychi- 
cal is  first.  If  there  is  reference  to  this  Alexandrian  philosophoumenon  at 
all  in  V.  46,  it  is  by  way  of  pointed  correction.  Paul  substitutes  for  the 
sequence  of  the  idealistic  philosophy,  the  sequence  of  historic  unfolding: 
the  categories  of  his  thought  are  Jewish  not  Hellenic:  he  reasons  in 
forms  of  time  not  of  space. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  233 

would  make  Paul  contradict  himself,  for  it  would  reverse  the 
order  insisted  upon  in  verse  46 :  not  the  pneumatic  is  first,  but 
the  psychical  first.  Besides  this,  it  would  make  the  pneumatic 
the  constitutive  principle  of  the  Person  of  Christ  before  the 
incarnation,  of  which  there  is  no  trace  elsewhere  in  Paul. 
The  phrase  e|  ovpavov  simply  expresses  that  Christ  after  a 
supernatural  fashion  became  "  the  second  man  "  at  the  point 
marked  by  eVeira  .^^  A  "  becoming "  is  affirmed  of  both 
Adams,  the  second  as  well  as  the  first,  for  the  iyevero  in  verse 
45  belongs  to  both  clauses.  ^^  How  far  in  either  case  the 
subject  of  which  this  is  affirmed  existed  before  in  a  differ- 
ent condition  is  not  reflected  upon.^^  The  whole  tenor  of  the 
discussion  compels  us  to  think  of  the  resurrection  as  the 
moment  at  which  to  Trvev/xaTiKov  entered,  the  second  man 
supernaturally  appeared,  in  the  form  of  irvevfia  ^wottolovv 
inaugurated  the  eschatological  era.^^  But  besides  identify- 
ing the  eschatological  and  the  pneumatic,  our  passage  is  pe- 
culiar in  that  it  mOst  closely  identifies  the  Spirit  with  Christ. 
In  the  preceding  passages  the  Spirit,  who  works  and  bears 
the  future  life  was  the  Spirit  of  God.  Here  it  is  not  merely 
the  Spirit  of  Christ,  but  the  Spirit  which  Christ  became.  And 
being  thus  closely  and  subjectively  identified  with  the  risen 
Christ  the  Spirit  imparts  to  Christ  the  life-giving  power  which 
is  peculiarly  the  Spirit's  own:  the  second  Adam  became  not 

'^  Cf .  for  this  use  of  i^  oipapov  2  Cor,  v,  2  "  our  habitation  which  is 
from  heaven";  Mk.  viii.  11,  xi.  30;  Jno,  iii.  27,  vi.  31;  Apoc.  xxi.  2.  The 
test  of  this  interpretation  of  i^  oipavov  lies  in  the  use  of  iirovpdpios  in  vss. 
48,  49;  this  is  applied  to  believers  as  well  as  to  Christ  and  in  the  case  of 
believers  it  cannot  mean  that  they  are  at  the  time  of  writing  "  from 
heaven"  or  "in  heaven",  cf.  Liitgert,  Der  Mensch  aus  dem  Himmel,  in 
Greifswalder  Studien,  1895,  pp.  207-229. 

**From  this  it  follows  that,  if  the  i^  oipapov  of  v.  47  were  understood  of 
the  preexistence,  it  would  involve  the  Arian  conception  of  a  creation  of 
Christ. 

^The  form  of  the  quotation  from  Genesis  made  it  easy  for  Paul  thus 
to  express  himself,  for  according  to  it  even  of  the  first  Adam  it  is  said 
iy^pero  els  xpvxvv  ^Cbaap  "he  was  made  into  a  living  soul",  which  in  a 
certain  sense  presupposes    (at  least  rhetorically)    his  previous  existence. 

'"The  Sept.  expresses  a  similar  thought  in  Is.  ix.  6  where  it  renders 
1^    ''DK    by    irar^p  rod  alQpos   /xAXoitos  "  father  of  the  age  to  come ". 


234 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 


only  irvevfia  fwv  but  Trpevfia  ^cdoitolovv.  This  is  of  great  im- 
portance for  determining  the  relation  to  eschatology  of  the 
Christ-worked  life  in  believers,  as  we  shall  soon  have  occasion 
to  show. 

In  a  few  other  passages  the  resurrection  of  Christ  is 
ascribed  to  the  Spirit  indirectly,  being  represented  as  an  act  of 
the  BvvafiL^,  the  Bo^a  of  God,  both  of  which  conceptions  are 
regularly  associated  with  the  Spirit,  cf.  Rom.  vi.  4;  i  Cor.  vi. 
14;  2  Cor.  xiii.  4.  In  none  of  these,  however,  is  any  reference 
made  to  the  permanent  presence  of  the  Spirh  in  Christ's  life. 
But  apart  from  the  resurrection  the  Bo^a  is  to  Paul  the  specific 
form  in  which  he  conceives  of  the  exalted  state  of  Jesus,  and 
this  Bo^a  is  so  closely  allied  to  the  Spirit  in  Christ  also,  as  to 
become  almost  a  synonym  for  it.  Thus,  as  God  the  Father 
is  said  to  have  raised  Christ  Bia  ti)9  Sdf?/?  avrov,  believers 
are  said  to  be  transformed  airo  Bo^tj^  ek  Bo^av  i.  e.  from  the 
glory  they  behold  in  (or  reflect  from)  Christ  unto  the  glory 
they  receive  in  themselves,  2  Cor.  iii.  18. 

We  have  found  that  the  Spirit  is  both  the  instrumental 
cause  of  the  resurrection-act  and  the  permanent  substratum 
of  the  resurrection-life.  The  question  here  arises:  which  of 
the  two  is  the  primary  idea,  either  in  order  of  thought  or  in 
point  of  chronological  emergence.  It  might  seem  plausible 
to  put  the  pneumatic  derivation  of  the  resurrection-act  first, 
and  to  explain  this  feature  from  what  the  Old  Testament 
teaches  concerning  the  Spirit  of  God  as  the  source  of  natural 
life  in  the  world  and  in  man,  especially  since  in  the  allegory 
of  Ezek.  xxxvii.  this  had  already  been  applied  to  the  (meta- 
phorical) resurrection  of  the  nation  of  Israel.  If  the  Spirit 
worked  physical  life  in  its  present  form,  what  was  more 
reasonable  than  to  assume  that  he  would  likewise  be  the 
author  of  the  restoration  of  physical  life  in  the  resurrection? 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  we  find  that  the  operation  of 
the  Spirit  in  connection  with  the  natural  world  recedes  into  the 
background  already  in  the  intercanonical  literature  and  re- 
mains so  in  the  New  Testament  writings  themselves.  In 
reality  Paul  connects  the  Spirit  with  the  resurrection  not  be- 
cause he  conceives  of  the  future  life  in  analogy  with  the  pres- 
ent life,  but  from  the  very  opposite  reason,  because  he  con- 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  235 

ceives  of  it  as  essentially  distinct  from  the  present  life,  as 
moving  in  a  totally  different  element.  It  is  more  probable, 
therefore,  that  the  thought  of  the  resurrection-life  as  pneu- 
matic in  character  is  with  him  first  in  order,  and  that,  in 
partial  dependence  on  this  at  least,  the  idea  emerges  of  the 
Spirit  as  the  author  of  the  act  of  the  resurrection.  For  this 
there  was  given  a  solid  Old  Testament  basis  in  trains  of  thought 
which  had  fully  held  their  own,  and  even  found  richer  develop- 
ment in  the  intermediate  and  in  the  early  New  Testament 
period.  The  transcendental,  supernatural  world  is  already  to 
the  Old  Testament  the  specific  domain  of  the  Spirit.  And, 
quite  apart  from  references  to  the  resurrection,  this  thought 
meets  us  again  in  Paul.  The  heavenly  world  is  the  pneumatic 
world,  even  irrespective  of  its  eschatological  complexion,  i  Cor. 
X.  3,  4;  Eph.  i.  3.  From  this  the  transition  is  not  difficult  to  the 
idea  that  the  eschatological  state  is  preeminently  a  pneumatic 
state,  since  the  highest  form  of  life  known,  that  of  the  world 
of  heaven,  must  impart  to  it  its  specific  character. 

This  will  become  clearer  still,  by  inquiring  in  the  next  place 
to  what  extent  the  soteriological  operations  of  the  Spirit  reveal 
eschatological  affinity.  Here  a  twofold  perspective  opens 
itself  up  to  us.  On  the  one  hand  in  the  forensic  sphere  all 
salvation  is  subsumed  under  the  great  rubric  of  justification. 
On  the  other  hand  in  the  pneumatic  sphere  the  categories  of 
regeneration  and  sanctification  play  an  equally  comprehensive 
part.  The  antithesis  between  the  forensic  and  the  pneumatic 
already  indicates  on  which  side  the  soteriological  activity  of 
the  Spirit  will  chiefly  lie  and  where  we  may  expect  traces,  if 
such  there  be,  of  eschatological  modes  of  approach  to  the 
subject.  Still  it  would  be  rash  simply  to  exclude  on  that  ac- 
count from  our  inquiry  the  topic  of  justification.  Into  the 
transaction  of  justification  also  the  Spirit  enters.  In  saying 
this  we  do  not  refer  to  the  function  of  the  Spirit  in  the  pro- 
duction of  faith  on  which  as  its  subjective  prerequisite  the 
justifying  act  of  God  is  suspended.  Nor  is  it  possible,  con- 
trary to  Paul's  plain  and  insistent  declarations  on  this  point, 
to  assign  the  vloOeala  in  part  to  the  subjective  sphere,  mak- 
ing it  consist  in  the  impartation  of  the  Spirit  of  sonship.^^ 
"This  Sokolowski  attempts  to  vindicate  as  the  true   Pauline  position. 


236  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

Nor  can  the  work  of  the  Spirit  in  the  subsequent  production  of 
assurance  come  under  consideration  for  our  present  purpose. 
What  we  mean  is  something  else  than  all  this.  The  possession 
of  the  Spirit  is  for  Paul  the  natural  correlate,  the  crown  and 
in  so  far  the  •  infallible  exponent  of  the  state  of  BtKaioavvrj, 
This  highly  characteristic  line  of  thought  can  perhaps  most 
clearly  be  traced  in  its  application  to  Christ.  For  the  same 
reason  that  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  in  a  very  real  sense 
the  justification  of  the  Christ,^^  this  can  likewise  be  affirmed  of 
the  resurrection-life  which  ever  since  that  moment  Christ  lives. 
The  life  and  glory  of  the  exalted  Saviour  are  the  product  and 
seal  and  exponent  of  his  status  of  righteousness.  Speaking 
in  our  own  terms,  and  yet  faithfully  rendering  the  Pauline 
conception,  we  may  say  that  in  his  resurrection-state  Christ 
is  righteousness  incarnate.  Hence  also  justification  is  made 
dependent  on  a  faith  terminating  upon  the  living,  glorified 
Christ,  for  in  this  living,  glorified  state,  his  efficacious  merit  is 
most  concretely  present  to  the  believer's  apprehension.  Now 
it  must  be  remarked  that  the  resurrection-state  which  is  thus 
exponential  of  righteousness  is  entirely  based  on  the  Spirit,  cf. 
I  Tim.  iii.  16  iBiKai(o6r}  ev  TrvevfiuTi.  By  becoming  Pneuma 
Christ  has  become  the  living  witness  of  the  eternal  presence 
of  righteousness  for  us  in  the  sight  of  God.^^  This  will  help 
us  to  understand  the  association  between  the  Spirit  and  right- 
eousness   where    it    appears    in    the    case    of    believers.      It 

op.  cit.  pp.  67  flf.  in  opposition  to  Weiss  and  Pfleiderer,  who  both  rightly 
insist  upon  it,  that  the  vlodeaia,  like  the  diKaluais,  is  to  Paul  a  strictly  declara- 
tive act. 

"  Rom.  iv.  25  -ftyipdr)  5ia  ttjv  SiKaluaiv  ijixuv  probably  refers  to  our 
representative  justification  in  Christ  as  preceding  his  resurrection,  just  as 
in  the  corresponding  clause  our  iraparTiifieLTa  precede  the  irapeSddv.  Accord- 
ing to  I  Cor.  XV.  17,  if  Christ  has  not  been  raised,  the  faith  of  the 
readers  is  vain,  futile  i.  e.  without  effect  of  justification.  Rom.  viii.  34 
teaches  that  the  crowning  reason,  why,  after  God's  justification  of  us, 
no  one  can  condemn,  lies  in  Christ's  resurrection.  To  ask  in  despair  of 
obtaining  righteousness :  "  Who  shall  descend  into  the  abyss  ?  "  is  accord- 
ing to  Rom.  X.  7  tantamount  to  declaring  the  resurrection  of  Christ  not 
accomplished. 

"Cf.  for  an  admirable  exposition  of  this  whole  train  of  thought: 
Schader,  Die  Bedeutung  des  lebendigen  Christus  fur  die  Rechtfertigung 
nach  Paulus,  1893. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  237 

must  here  have  the  same  significance,  on  the  one  hand  that  of 
a  seal  attesting  justification  as  an  accompHshed  fact,  on  the 
other  hand  that  of  the  normal  fruit  of  righteousness.  And 
it  is  the  former  because  it  is  the  latter:  the  possession  of  the 
Spirit  seals  the  actuality  of  righteousness,  because  in  no  other 
way  than  on  the  basis  of  righteousness  could  the  Spirit  have 
been  bestowed.  In  this  sense  Paul  says  that  the  Pneuma  is 
life  Bta  8L/caL0(Tvpr)v ,  Rom.  viii.  10;  and  stakes  the  whole 
question  as  to  the  method  by  which  the  Galatians  were  justi- 
fied on  this,  how  the  Spirit  was  supplied  to  them.  Gal.  iii.  5. 
The  redemption  from  the  curse  of  the  law  had  the  intent  and 
effect  of  bringing  to  believers  the  promised  Spirit,  Gal.  iii.  14. 
The  status  of  sonship  carries  with  it  the  mission  of  the  Spirit 
into  the  heart,  Gal.  iv.  6.  In  Tit.  iii.  5,  6  the  gift  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  proves  the  connecting  link  between  justification  and  re- 
newal, being  the  effect  of  the  former  and  the  source  of  the 
latter.  The  Trvevfia  vlo6e(Tla<i  in  Rom.  viii.  15  is  a  Spirit 
which  results  from  (or  goes  with)  adoption,  not  a  Spirit  which 
effects  adoption.  In  i  Cor.  vi.  11  the  washing,  sanctifying 
and  justifying  of  the  Corinthians  is  attributed  to  the  Spirit  of 
God  as  well  as  to  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  on 
the  exegesis,  which  takes  the  ayLaaOrjTe  in  the  sense  of  "  ye 
were  consecrated  ",  the  whole  transaction  in  its  three  stages 
belongs  to  the  forensic  sphere,  and  the  Spirit  receives  a  specific 
function  within  that  sphere.  ^^ 

It  is  plain,  however,  that  all  these  statements  with  reference 
to  the  Spirit's  presence  in  believers  have  for  their  background 
the  presence  of  the  Spirit  in  the  same  capacity  as  a  seal  and 
fruit  of  justification  in  the  exalted  Christ.  And  it  is  from  this 
that  they  receive  their  eschatological  coloring.  For  in  Christ 
this  Spirit  which  is  the  seal  and  fruit  of  righteousness  is  none 
other  than  the  Spirit  of  the  consummate  life  and  the  consum- 
mate glory,  the  circumambient  element  of  the  eschatological 
state  in  general.  The  conclusion,  therefore,  is  fully  warranted 
that  the  Spirit  as  a  living  attestation  of  the  state  of  righteous- 

'*  If  ay'.d(rdr]T€  be  taken  in  its  technical  sense  of  "  sanctification ",  the 
two  Datives  iv  dvbixan  and  iv  weifiaTi  will  have  to  be  chiastically  dis- 
tributed, the  former  going  with  "  ye  were  justified  ",  the  latter  with  "  ye 
were  washed  ",  "  ye  were  sanctified  ". 


238  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

ness  in  the  believer  has  this  significance,  because  he  is  in  prin- 
ciple the  fountain  of  the  blessedness  of  the  world  to  come.  And 
this  is  verified  by  observing  how  Paul  combines  with  righteous- 
ness the  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  finds  in  this 
Spirit-fed  peace  and  joy  the  essence  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
Rom.  xiv.  17;  how  the  first-fruit  of  the  Spirit  looks  forward 
to  the  eschatological  vlodeaCa  Rom.  viii.  23 ;  how  the  KaraWa'^ri 
and  the  resulting  justification  (not  first  nor  merely  the  sub- 
jective renewal)  open  up  to  the  Christian  a  Kaivr)  Kjlau^  ,  that 
new  world  in  which  the  old  things  are  passeci  away  and  new 
things  have  come,^^  and  which,  as  contradistinguished  from  the 
cdp^^  must  be  the  /crio-t?  of  the  Pneuma.  Finally,  most  in- 
structive is  here  Gal.  v.  5  :  irvevfiaTL  ck  irCaTew^  ekirCha  SLKaioavvr)^ 
a7T€K8€xoM'€6a  .  Here  the  righteousness  of  the  world  to  come 
which  is  to  be  bestowed  in  the  last  judgment  is  represented 
as  a  thing  which  the  Christian  still  waits  for.^^  This  waiting, 
however,  is  determined  by  two  coordinated  factors :  on  the  one 
hand  it  takes  place  ck  Trio-Teft)?,  on  the  other  hand  irvevixan  ,^® 
and  these  two  designate  the  subjective  and  the  objective 
ground  respectively  on  which  the  confident  expectation  is 
based.  In  the  Spirit,  not  in  the  adp^ ,  in  faith,  not  in  epya 
vofjLov,  has  the  Christian  the  assurance  that  the  full  eschatologi- 
cal righteousness  will  become  his.  (Cf.  also  Tit.  iii.  7.) 

More  specifically,  however,  the  Spirit  belongs  to  the  other 
hemisphere  of  soteriology,  that  of  the  subjective  renewal  and 
the  renewed  state  of  man.  It  needs  no  pointing  out  how  inti- 
mately this  is  associated  with  the  Spirit.  TlvevfiaTL  TrepLirarevl 
is  a  comprehensive  phrase  for  the  God-pleasing  walk  of  the 
Christian,  Gal.  v.  16;  Kara  irvevfia  designates  the  standard  of 
ethical  normality,  both  as  to  being  and  striving,  Rom.  viii.  5. 

"  Thus  yiyovtv  Kaivd   should  be  rendered,  not :  "  they  have  become  new  ". 

**  'EXWs  is  here  objective  "the  thing  hoped  for"  and  diK&ioaifnjs  is 
Gen.  of  apposition :  "  the  hoped  for  thing  consisting  in  righteousness." 

"  UverjfmTi  and  iK  tt/o-tcws  are  not  to  be  construed  together,  so  as  to 
make  out  the  meaning  "  the  Spirit  received  out  of  faith ".  Both  go  co- 
ordinately  with  the  verb.  Cf.  for  this  passage  the  very  lucid  exposition  of 
Zahn,  in  his  Commentary,  pp.  249  flf.  He  renders  the  verse  as  follows : 
"  Wir  erwarten  im  Geist  im  Folge  Glaubens  einen  Hoffnungsgegenstand, 
welcher  in  Gerechtigkeit  besteht." 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  239 

The  contrast  between  adp^  and  irveiffia  is  an  ethical  contrast, 
Gal.  V.  1 7.  Paul  represents  the  Christian  virtues  and  graces 
as  fruits  and  gifts  of  the  Spirit,  Gal.  v.  19  and  Rom.  xii.  8  ff. 
In  particular  love,  which  the  Apostle  regards  as  the  essence  of 
fulfilment  of  the  law  is  derived  from  the  Spirit,  Rom.  xv.  30; 
Col.  i.  8.  The  whole  range  of  sanctification  belongs  to  the 
province  of  the  Spirit,  whence  it  is  called  dytaafjLOfi  irvev^iaro'i, 
2  Thess.  ii.  13,  and  likewise,  of  course,  the  "  renewal  "  at  the 
beginning,  Tit.  iii.  5.  But  not  only  the  specifically-ethical, 
also  the  more  generally  religious,  graces  and  dispositions  are 
the  Spirit's  work,  such  as  f  aith,^^  i  Cor.  ii.  4,  5 ;  2  Cor.  iii.  3 
in  connection  with  i  Cor.  iii.  5;  2  Cor.  iv.  13;  joy.  Rom.  xiv. 
17;  Gal.  y.  22;  I  Thess.  i.  6;  peace  Rom.  viii.  6,  xiv.  17,  xv. 
13;  I  Cor  xiv.  33;  Gal.  v.  22;  Eph.  iv.  3;  hope  Rom.  iv  5, 
xii.  12;  Gal.  V.  5;  Eph.  i.  18,  iv.  4.  Now  the  comprehensive 
conception  under  which  Paul  subsumes  all  these  ethical  and 
religious  states,  dispositions  and  activities  is  that  of  "  life  ". 
It  is  the  "  Spirit  of  life  "  which  as  a  new  principle  and  norm 
sets  free  of  sin  and  determines  the  Christian,  Rom.  viii.  2. 
Whilst  the  letter  kills,  the  Spirit  gives  life,  2  Cor.  iii.  6,  and 
that  not  merely  in  the  forensic  sense,  but  also  in  the  etliico- 
religious  sense  (on  account  of  verses  2,  3).  Because  believers 
live  by  the  Spirit,  they  can  be  exhorted  also  to  walk  by  the 
Spirit,  Gal.  v.  25.  Life  is  to  Paul  by  no  means  an  exclusively 
physical  conception,^^  as  Rom.  vii.  8-1 1;  Eph.  iv.  18  will 
show.  The  Apostle  even  approaches  the  conception  that  it 
springs  from  communion  with  God,  Rom.  viii.  7;  Eph.  iv.  18, 
and  explicitly  defines  its  goal  as  lying  in  God  Rom.  vi.  10,  11 ; 
Gal.  ii.  19.  We  find  then  that  on  the  one  hand  the  renewal 
and  the  renewed  state  are  derived  from  the  Spirit,  and  that  on 
the  other  hand  they  are  reduced  to  terms  of  life.  This  cer- 
tainly suggests  the  inference  that  the  connecting  link  between 
the  things  enumerated  and  the  Spirit  lies  in  their  being  viewed 
as  phenomena  of  life.    The  Spirit  works  all  this,  because  he  is 

**  So  correctly  Sokolowski  pp.  71  ff,  against  Weiss  and  Pfleiderer;  cf. 
also  Titius,  Der  Paulinismus  unter  dem  Gesichtspunkt  der  Seligkeit,  1900, 
p.  43,  against  Wendt. 

*^  Against  Kabisch,  Die  PauUnische  Eschatologie,  1893.  Kabisch  is  the 
Schweitzer  of  Paulinism. 


240 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 


the  author  of  life.  With  this  agrees  the  fact  that  in  the  pas- 
sages cited  above,  where  the  ethical  renewal  of  the  Christian 
is  attributed  to  the  Spirit,  Rom.  viii.  2 ;  2  Cor.  iii.  6;  Gal.  v.  25, 
the  conception  of  **  life  "  in  each  case  accompanies  the  other 
two,  being,  as  it  were,  the  conception  in  which  these  meet 
and  find  their  higher  unity. 

Our  inquiry,  therefore,  resolves  itself  into  this,  whether 
when  Paul  calls  the  new  state  and  walk  of  the  believer 
life,  a  life  by  and  in  the  Spirit,  this  has  anything  to  do  with  or 
can  receive  any  light  from  the  eschatologfcal  aspect  of  the 
Spirit.  It  might  be  thought  that  the  whole  subsumption  of  the 
ethico-religious  content  of  the  Christian  state  under  the  cate- 
gory of  the  pneumatic,  which  is  so  characteristic  of  Paul,  is 
nothing  else  but  a  simple  working  out  of  the  prophetic  teaching 
which,  as  we  have  seen  above,  derives  from  the  Spirit  the 
new  heart,  the  new  obedience,  the  state  of  acceptance 
with  God.  In  that  case  the  soteriological  operation  of  the 
Spirit  on  its  subjective  side  would  not  be  in  any  way  affected 
by  his  eschatological  associations.  Paul's  movement  of  thought 
in  conceiving  of  the  Spirit  as  the  new  element  of  the  Christian 
state  would  have  been  exclusively  in  the  direction  from  the 
present  to  the  future :  because  the  Spirit  is  and  does  this  now, 
he  will  also  be  operative  after  the  same  fashion  in  the  future.*^ 
We  do  not  mean  to  deny  that  this  correctly  reproduces  a  train 
of  thought  with  which  Paul  was  familiar.  After  once  the 
Spirit  was  clearly  apprehended  as  the  substratum  and  element 
of  the  present  Christian  state  it  was  inevitable  that  from  this 
point  of  view  the  line  of  his  characteristic  activity  should  be 
prolonged  into  the  future.  Thus  we  find  it  in  Rom.  viii.  11. 
But  this  does  not  by  any  means  exclude  that  alongside  of  this 
there  may  have  been  a  perspective  in  the  opposite  direction,  or 
that  this  may  even  represent  the  earlier  and  more  fundamental 
mode  of  viewing  the  subject.    Direct  action  and  reflex  action 

"Thus  Sokolowski  thinks  that  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  the  Spirit  as 
the  author  of  the  resurrection  arose,  because  to  Paul  the  Spirit  as  the 
author  of  ethical  processes  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
idea  of  the  resurrection,  stood  equally  in  the  foreground,  "  und  das  um  so 
sicherer  als  sich  seine  "  (d.  h.  des  Geistes)  "  Fahigkeit  physisches  Leben 
zu  wirken  aus  dem  gegenwartigen  Dasein  des  Menschen  ausweist ",  p.  205. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL  241 

here  naturally  go  together  as  again  Rom.  viii.  11  strikingly 
shows. 

Against  exclusive  insistence  upon  the  former  construction 
we  would  urge  the  following.  First  2  Cor.  v.  5  is  one  of  the 
three  directly  eschatological  passages  where,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  present  Spirit  is  an  anticipation  of  the  future  Spirit.  Sec- 
ondly, the  close  association  of  the  ethico-religious  function  of 
the  Spirit  with  life  in  itself  creates  a  presumption  in  favor  of 
the  view  that  the  future  here  in  part  at  least  colors  the  present. 
For  "  life  "  is  undoubtedly  with  Paul,  and  before  Paul  with 
Jesus,  especially  in  the  Synoptical  teaching,  and  idea  that  is  in 
the  first  instance  eschatologically  conceived  and  thence 
carried  back  into  the  present.  It  is  the  f©^  aidavLo^  of  the 
world  to  come.  In  the  third  place  Paul  speaks  of  the  present 
pneumatic  state  in  terms  which  are  either  directly  borrowed 
from  the  eschatological  vocabulary,  or  strongly  reminiscent 
of  it.  The  Kaivri  KTiaif;  of  2  Cor.  v.  17;  Gal.  vi.  15  is  such 
a  term,  and  also  the  Kaiporrj^  Trvevfiaro^  of  Rom.  vii.  6  and 
the  KaLvrj  SiadrJKTj  TrvevfjLarofi  of  2  Cor.  iii.  6,  may  here  be 
remembered.  Fourthly,  even  in  the  Old  Testament  where  the 
ethical  operation  of  the  Spirit  is  mentioned,  this  is  done  in  the 
form  of  a  promise,  so  that  from  the  outset  it  appears  in  an 
eschatological  environment.*^  Fifthly,  here  also,  as  before,  we 
must  take  into  account  the  Christological  background  of  the 
soteriological  process.  The  pneumatic  life  of  the  Christian  is 
a  product  and  a  reflex  of  the  pneumatic  life  of  the  Christ.  It 
is  a  life  iv  irvev/xari  to  the  same  extent  as  it  is  a  life  eV 
XpiaTw  *^     It  is  important  sharply  to  define  the  peculiarity 

*'In  this  connection  it  should  be  noted  that  the  prophets,  while  ascrib- 
ing to  the  Spirit  the  task  of  ethico-religious  renewal,  do  not  speak  of  the 
state  thus  produced  in  terms  of  life.  The  combination  between  the  two 
ideas  Paul  did  not  borrow  from  the  prophets. 

"It  is  not  essential  to  the  above  position  to  assert  that  the  two  for- 
mulas are  entirely  synonymous  and  coextensive,  or  that  the  formula  iv 
XpuTT(f  is  formed  after  the  analogy  of  iv  Trve^tnan,  as  Deissman,  Die  Neutes- 
tamentliche  Formel  in  Christo-Jesu,  1892,  thinks.  Walter,  Der  religiose 
Gehalt  des  Galaterhriefs,  1904,  pp.  122-144,  has,  in  our  opinion,  convincingly 
shown  that  the  usage  of  iv  Xpurrip  considerably  overlaps  the  limits  within 
which  iv  TTveiifxari  would  be  applicable.     It  has  a  large  forensic  connota- 


242 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 


on  this  point  of  the  Pauline  doctrine  on  the  relation  between 
the  Spirit  bestowed  by  Christ  and  the  Saviour's  own  glorified 
life,  and  the  extent  to  which  it  marks  a  development  beyond 
the  pre-Pauline  teaching.  In  the  Petrine  speeches  recorded 
in  the  earlier  chapters  of  Acts  the  Spirit  indeed  appears  as  a 
gift  of  the  glorified  Christ.  It  was  given  to  Jesus  in  fulfilment 
of  the  promise  of  the  Father  and  having  received  the  promised 
Spirit  he  immediately  poured  it  forth  upon  the  disciples,  Acts 
ii.  33.  But  according  to  Paul  Jesus  at  the  resurrection  receives 
the  Spirit  not  merely  as  an  objective  gift^.  something  that  he 
can  dispense;  the  Spirit  becomes  his  own  subjective  possession, 
the  Spirit  dwelling  in  him,  the  source  of  his  own  glorified  life, 
so  that  when  he  communicates  the  Spirit  he  communicates  of 
his  own,  whence  also  the  possession  of  the  Spirit  works  in  the 
believer  a  mystical,  vital  union  with  Christ.  While  Peter's 
teaching  leaves  full  room  for  this  whole  rich  Pauline  develop- 
ment, it  does  not  yet  contain  this  development.*^  Paul  em- 
phasizes repeatedly  that  the  Spirit  who  works  life  in  believers 
is  the  identical  Spirit  who  wrought  and  still  is  life  for  the  ex- 
alted Lord,  Rom.  viii.  9,  1 1 ;  2  Cor.  xiii.  4.  When  Jesus  was 
raised  from  the  dead,  he  did  become  Pneuma,  but  this  Pneuma 
was  more  than  ^S>v  he  was  ^(ooiroiovv ,  communicating  himself 

tion.  But  where  iv  Xpurrtp  relates  to  the  mystical  sphere,  the  two  formulas 
are  practically  interchangeable. 

'"A  point  of  contact  for  it  has  been  found  in  Acts  iv.  2.  When  it  is 
said  that  the  Apostles  "proclaimed  in  Jesus  the  resurrection  from  the 
dead",  this  might,  so  far  as  the  words  are  concerned,  have  the  pregnant 
Pauline  meaning,  to  the  effect  that  the  general  resurrection  (of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  kingdom)  was  potentially  given  in  Jesus'  resurrection.  The 
opposite  extreme  is  to  understand  the  Apostolic  preaching  as  a  simple 
affirmation  of  the  possibility  of  the  resurrection  as  illustrated  in  the 
concrete  case  of  Jesus,  with  an  anti-Sadducaeic  point.  But  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  from  the  beginning  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  was  appre- 
hended in  its  eschatological  as  well  as  in  its  Christological  importance. 
The  best  view  is  to  find  in  the  words  the  affirmation  by  the  Apostles  that 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  guaranteed  the  resurrection  of  believers  in 
general,  without  reflection  upon  the  vital  connection  between  the  two.  The 
same  idea  of  the  typical  significance  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  finds 
expression  in  the  phrases  dpxvy^^  f«^s  iii.  I5  and  ipxvy^^  kaI  aur-fip  in 
V.  31,  if  at  least  dpxvy^s  be  given  the  pregnant  sense  of  one  who  first 
experiences  in  himself  what  he  effects  for  others. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 


243 


to  others,  i  Cor.  xv.  45.  This  only  will  explain  why  Paul 
cannot  merely  say  Christ  has  the  Spirit  but  can  say :  6  Be 
KvpLo^  TO  TTvev/jid  iariv  and  can  speak  of  Christ  as  Ku/oto? 
TTz/eu/ttaro?  ,  2  Cor.  iii.  17,  18.^^  The  gospel  is  the  gospel  of 
the  glory  of  Christ,  2  Cor.  iv.  5.  And  in  the  light  of  all 
this  it  must  be  further  interpreted  when  Paul  speaks  of  the 
process  of  renewal  and  sanctification  in  terms  which  are  not 
merely  derived  from  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Christ, 
for  this  might  be  a  purely  figurative  usage,  but  in  terms  which 
posit  a  real,  vital  connection  between  the  two,  so  that  what 
takes  place  in  the  believer  is  an  actual  self -reproduction  of 
what  was  transacted  in  Christ.  To  be  joined  with  the  Lord  is 
to  be  one  Spirit  with  him,  i  Cor.  vi.  17.  Now  all  this  tends  to 
confirm  the  conclusion  already  drawn  from  the  four  preceding 
considerations.  If  the  pneumatic  life  of  the  Christian  bears  this 
relation  to  the  pneumatic  life  of  the  exalted  Lord,  then  it 
must  to  some  extent  partake  of  the  eschatological  character  of 
the  latter.^^ 

It  will  perhaps  repay  us  to  pursue  this  thought  somewhat 
further  from  a  different  angle.     Especially  in  the  later  epis- 

*'In  drrb  Kvplov  irveO/xaTos  the  preposition  governs  Kvplov  and  wpe^/xaros 
is  Genit.  qualitatis.  It  means  "  from  the  Lord  of  the  Spirit "  not  "  from 
the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  ".  Gloel,  p.  123 :  "  Geistes  Herr  ist  Christus  sofern 
er  als  Herr  zu  einem  Stand  erhoben  ist  im  welchem  Geist  den  Charakter 
seines  Wesens  ausmacht."  An  interesting  parallel  to  i  Cor.  xv.  45  and  2 
Cor.  iii.  17  is  Is.  xxviii.  5,  6  "  Jehovah  will  become  a  Spirit  of  justice."  The 
parallel  shows  how  close  the  identification  between  the  Spirit  and  Christ  is ; 
it  is  in  some  respects  like  unto  that  between  Jehovah  and  the  Spirit  in  the 
Old  Testament.  Parallel  with  the  union  between  the  Spirit  and  Christ's 
human  nature  runs  that  of  the  believer  and  the  Spirit.  Hence  the  peculiar 
phraseology  rb  Hvedfid  fwv,  rb  Hvev/xd  <tov. 

*^  There  is  only  one  qualification  to  be  added  to  the  above  statement. 
When  Paul  conceives  the  present  life  of  the  Christian  as  semi-eschat- 
ological,  this  does  not  extend  to  the  body.  Rom.  viii.  18;  2  Cor.  iii,  18, 
iv.  17,  18,  V.  3,  4;  Col.  iii.  3  do  not  teach  that  a  change  in  the  body  is 
now  taking  place,  or  a  new  pneumatic  body  now  being  formed  under- 
neath the  sarkic  body.  Cf,  Titius,  Der  Paulinismus,  pp.  58  ff.,  as  against 
Schmiedel.  Reitzenstein,  Die  Hellenistischen  Mysterienreligionen  pp.  175 
E.  would  even  find  in  iirevd^a cur Oai  of  2  Cor.  v.  2,  4  the  idea  that,  after 
divestment  of  the  earthly  body,  Paul  will  not  be  found  naked  but  in 
possession  of  an  interior  body. 


244 


ESCHATOLOGV  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 


ties,  but  also  to  some  extent  already  in  the  earlier  ones,  the 
Christian  state  is  represented  as  a  belonging  to  and  partici- 
pation in  the  sphere  of  heaven  and  the  heavenly  order  of 
things.  The  principle  is,  of  course,  implied  in  everything 
taught  about  communion  with  the  heavenly  Christ.  But  in  the 
representation  we  have  now  in  mind  it  assumes  a  broader,  less 
personal,  so  to  speak,  more  local  form  of  expression.  There 
are  two  worlds  the  lower  and  the  higher,  and  it  is  affirmed 
of  the  believer  that  he  belongs  to  the  latter  and  no  longer  to 
the  former  tempgral,  the  latter  eternal,  2  Cor.  iv,  18.  The 
reality.  Each  has  its  own  (txvH^^  but  the  <Txn/^^  after  which 
the  Christian  patterns  himself  is  that  of  the  other  world  not 
that  of  this  world,  Rom.  xii.  2.  There  is  a  system  of  things 
that  are  seen,  and  a  system  of  things  that  are  not  seen, 
the  former  temporal,  the  latter  eternal,  2  Cor.  iv.  18.  The 
world  has  been  crucified  to  the  Christian  and  he  unto  the  world. 
Gal.  vi.  15.  There  is  a  sphere  of  the  heavenly,  far  above 
all  rule  and  authority  and  power  and  dominion,  Eph.  i.  20, 
21.  Believers  have  been  made  to  sit  in  heavenly  places,  Eph. 
ii.  6.  The  Christian  has  his  n-oXnela  in  heaven,  not  upon 
earth  and  therefore  should  not  mind  earthly  things,  Phil.  iii. 
19,  20.  Being  raised  with  Christ  he  must  seek  and  set  his 
mind  upon  the  things  that  are  above,  not  upon  the  things  that 
are  upon  the  earth.  Col.  iii.  i.  2.  Sometimes  this  higher 
heavenly  order  of  things  is  centered  in  the  risen  Christ,  but  it 
is  also  identified  with  the  realm  of  the  Spirit.  The  Trvev/xariKop 
is  the  heavenly.  God  has  blessed  us  iv  irda-rj  evXoyia  irvev/j^ 
aTLKy  iv  ToZ?  iirovpavCoi^ ,  Eph.  i.  3.  The  irvev^ariKO';  is  also  the 
iTTovpdviofi,  I  Cor.  xv.  40,  50,  (Cf.  i  Cor.  x.  3)  When 
speaking  of  "  the  things  not  seen "  and  "  eternal ",  Paul 
undoubtedly  has  in  mind  the  Pneuma  as  the  category  to  which 
these  belong,  2  Cor.  iv.  18  (cf.  the  ava/caivovTai  in  verse  16 
and  the  alcoviov  ^dpo<i  ho^rj^  in  verse  17,  the  iTriyeiof;  in 
V.  I  and  the  appa^wv  tov  TrvevfxaTo^  in  verse  5.)  The  same 
applies  to  the  distinction  between  the  spheres  of  faith  and 
sight  in  2  Cor.  v.  7.  And  somewhat  of  the  contrast  between  the 
earthly  and  the  heavenly  enters  into  the  great  Pauline  antithesis 
of  adp^  and  Trvev/xa,  a  point  to  which  we  shall  presently  revert. 
What  interests  us  here  is  that  this  whole  opposition  between  a 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL  245 

heavenly  and  an  earthly  order  of  things  and  the  anchoring  of 
the  Christian  life  in  the  former  is  a  direct  offshoot  of  the 
eschatological  distinction  between  two  ages.  The  eschatologi- 
cal  point  of  view  is,  of  course,  originally  historical  and  dra- 
matic ;  a  new  world  can  come  only  with  the  new  age  and  there- 
fore lies  at  first  in  the  future.  But  the  coming  age  has  begun 
to  be  present  with  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Christ.  From 
this  it  follows  that  of  the  coming  world  likewise  a  present 
existence  can  be  affirmed.  Here  then  the  scheme  of  two  suc- 
cessive worlds  makes  place  for  the  scheme  of  two  coexisting 
worlds.  Still  further  it  must  be  remembered  that  Christ  has 
through  his  resurrection  carried  the  center  of  this  new  world 
into  heaven  where  he  reigns  and  whence  he  extends  its  influence 
and  boundaries.  The  two  coexisting  worlds  therefore  broadly 
coincide  with  the,  spheres  of  heaven  and  earth.  If  now  the 
higher,  heavenly  world  to  which  the  Christian  belongs  is  that 
of  the  Spirit,  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  it  has  become 
this  in  virtue  of  the  progress  of  the  eschatological  drama  and 
will  become  so  more  in  the  same  degree  that  this  drama  has- 
tens on  to  its  final  denouement.  The  pneumatic  life  of  the 
believer,  while  centered  in  heaven,  loses  none  of  its  eschatolo- 
gical setting.  Back  of  the  static  continues  to  lie  the  dramatic ; 
the  distinction  between  the  earthly  and  the  heavenly  is  not 
cosmologically  but  eschatologically  conceived.  By  the  pneu- 
matic as  a  synonym  of  the  heavenly  Paul  does  not  mean 
heaven  or  the  spiritual  in  the  abstract,  but  heaven  and  the 
spiritual  as  they  have  become  in  result  of  the  process  of  re- 
demption. To  TTvev/iaTLKov  is  "  second  "  (elra)  and  Christ  as 
Hvevfia  ^(ooiroLovv  "became"  (  iyevero  ) ."^^  This  will  also 
explain  why  the  new  contrast  between  two  simultaneous 
worlds  does  not  supersede  the  eschatological  perspective  for  the 
future.  The  two  spheres  still  are  in  conflict,  the  two  ages  still 
labor  to  bring  forth  their  respective  worlds,  a  crisis  is  still 
outstanding.  Cf.  Eph.  i.  14,  i.  21,  ii.  7,  12,  iv.  4,  30,  v.  6; 
Col.  iii.  4,  vi.  24;  Phil.  i.  6,  ii.  16,  iii.  20.  Precisely  here  lies 
the  point  in  which  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  the  Spirit  and  the 

*^  Here  the  difference  between  Philo  and  Paul  is  very  striking,  for  ac- 
cording to  Philo  Adam  already  possessed  the  Pneuma-power,  Opif.  144 
quoted  by  Volz,  p.  106. 


246  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 

Hellenic  or  Hellenistic  conception  of  the  pneuma  are  sharply 
differentiated,  striking  though  their  similarity  in  some  other 
respects  may  be.  The  Greek  philosophical  pneuma,  whether  in 
its  dualistic  Platonic  or  neo-Platonic  form,  or  in  its  hylozoistic 
Stoic  form,  lacks  every  historic  significance,  it  is,  even  where 
it  appears  in  contrast  to  an  opposing  element,  the  result  of  a 
bisection  of  nature,  not  the  product  of  a  supernatural  divine 
activity.  With  Paul,  both  in  regard  to  the  <rdp^  and  the 
irvevfjMy  the  historical  factor  remains  the  controlling  one.  H 
the  sphere  of  the  adp^  is  evil,  this  is  not  dud^to  its  natural  con- 
stitution, because  it  is  material  or  sensual,  but  because  it  has 
historically  become  evil  through  the  entrance  of  sin.^^  And 
when  Paul  views  the  pneumatic  world  as  the  consummated 
world,  this  also  is  not  due  simply  to  its  natural  constitution 
as  the  ideal  nonsensual  world,  but  because  through  the  Messiah 
it  has  become  the  finished  product  of  God's  designs  for  man.^^ 
Even  into  the  revealing  work  of  the  Spirit  the  eschatological 
associations  enter.  From  the  nature  of  the  case  this  has  its 
primary  reference  to  the  present  life,  just  as  the  glossolalia  and 
the  cognate  phenomena  are  rather  premonitions  of  the  world 
to  come  than  constituent  elements  of  that  world  itself,  sub- 
eschatological  rather  than  semi-eschatological  manifestations.*^^ 
Revelation,  however,  while  providing  for  a  present  need,  may 
have  for  its  object  the  realities  of  the  future  life,  and  thus  the 
thought  emerges  that  the  Spirit,  who  is  so  closely  identified 
with  the  future  life  in  general,  when  thus  disclosing  the  things 
to  come,  discloses  what  in  a  very  special  sense  is  his  own. 
With  this  thought  we  actually  meet  in  i  Cor.  ii.  The  wisdom 
which  Paul  speaks  among  the  reXetot,  verse  6,  but  which  he 
could  not  speak  among  the  Corinthians  (iii.  i  irvevfiariKoi  = 
rikeioi  ) ,  a  wisdom  therefore  to  be  distinguished  from  his  ordi- 
nary preaching,  God's  wisdom  iv  /jLva-Trjpitp  (ii.  7)  is  ac- 
cording to  verse  10  derived  from  the  Spirit.     The  point  of 

*•  Notice  the  studied  avoidance  of  the  term  <rapKiKbs  in  the  context  of 
I  Cor.  XV.  44  flF.,  where  Paul  wishes  to  contrast  the  pneumatic  with  the 
natural-as-such,  irrespective  of  its  sinful  quality. 

"  Cf .  Titius,  Der  Paulinismus,  pp.  242-250. 

"Cf.  I  Cor.  xiv.  22,  xiii.  10-13;  but,  on  the  other  hand  xiii.  i  "the 
tongues  of  angels  ". 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  247 

view  from  which  Paul  makes  this  last  affirmation  is  partly  theo- 
logical :  the  Spirit  is  the  appropriate  organ  for  revealing  such 
things,  because  he  stands  in  as  intimate  a  relation  to  God  as 
the  spirit  of  a  man  to  man.  He  can  search  all  things, 
even  those  deep  things  of  God  with  which  the  higher  cro<^m 
deals,  for  he  is  the  Spirit  of  God.  Intertwined  with  this,  how- 
ever, appears  the  other  consideration,  that  the  "  wisdom  "  has 
to  do  with  eschatological  facts  and  that  for  this  reason  it  be- 
longs to  the  particular  province  of  the  Spirit  to  reveal  it.  It  re- 
lates to  something  that  has  been  hidden,  which  God  foreor- 
dained before  the  aeons,  and  which  concerned  the  86^a  of  be- 
lievers, verse  7.  More  particularly  it  is  defined  as  that  "  which 
eye  saw  not  and  ear  heard  not,  and  which  entered  not  into  the 
heart  of  man,  whatsoever  things  God  prepared  for  them  that 
love  him  ".^^  It  comprises  "  the  things  that  were  freely  given 
to  us  of  God  ",  verse  12.  In  contrast  to  it  stands  a  wisdom  rod 
al(avo<;  tovtov  "  of  this  age  "  and  of  "  the  dpxoPT€<:  of  this 
age  "  who  are  already  coming  to  nought,  verse  6.  Those  who 
belong  to  "  this  age  "  can  not  know  it,  verse  8.  Obviously  this 
implies  that  believers  can  know  it  because  they  belong  to  "  the 
age  to  come."^^  Because  they  have  part  in  the  future  world, 
the  mysteries  of  the  future  world  are  communicable  to  them. 
Now,  it  should  be  noticed  that  Paul  expresses  the  same  idea 
also  in  the  other  form  that  the  Christian  is,  or  may  be  ttvcv/jl- 
ariKo'i,  whereas  the  man  who  belongs  to  the  present  age  is 
ylrvxi''c6<i^  ii.  14-16,  iii.  I.  It  is  as  irvevfiaTiKo^i  that  he  has 
access  to  these  transcendental  things  from  which  the  '^vxtKo'i 
is  by  his  very  constitution  excluded.  To  belong  to  the  world 
to  come  and  to  be  irvevixaTiKo^  are  used  as  interchangeable 
conceptions.  Not  merely,  therefore,  because  the  Christian  is 
the  recipient  of  revelation,  but  for  the  further  and  more  speci- 

"^  According  to  Origen  Comm.  ad  Matth.  xxvii.  9  these  words  stood  in 
the  Secreta  Eliae  Prophetae  which  tends  to  confirm  their  eschatological 
reference  (cf.  Schurer,  Gesch.  des.  Jiid.  Volk.  Ill,  pp.  361  ff.).  Dibelius, 
Die  Geisterwelt  im  Glauben  des  Paulus,  1909,  p.  91  note  i. 

^  In  the  reading  i}/uv  ydp  (v.  10)  the  ydp  is  highly  significant,  be- 
cause it  attaches  itself  to  the  intermediate  (unexpressed)  thought:  "We 
do  not  share  in  the  ignorance  of  the  al<i}v  ovtos" — "  for  to  us  God  has 
revealed  them  through  his  Spirit." 


248  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 

fic  reason,  that  he  already  partakes  of  that  which  is  the  distinc- 
tive quality  of  the  future  life,  can  he  be  initiated  into  the 
mysteries  of  the  latter.  The  spirit  is  the  source  of  the  escha- 
tological  fivarijpiov  both  in  the  sphere  of  being  and  in  the 
sphere  of  revelation.  Hence  also  in  verse  1 1  Paul  draws  a  for- 
mal distinction  between  the  irvevfia  of  the  fc6a-fio<;  and  the 
TTvev/JLa  TO  €K  rov  Oeov  which  once  more  shows  that  the  Spirit  is 
considered  not  exclusively  as  a  principium  revelations,  but  as 
the  determining  principle  of  an  order  of  things,  and  therefore 
as  the  natural  organ  for  disclosing  its  content.^*  The  passage 
also  furnishes  a  parallel  to  the  eschatological  interpretation  of 
the  contrast  between  yjrvxtKOfi  and  irvevfiariKO';  met  with  in 
I  Cor.  XV.  44  ff.  Very  sharply  Paul  distinguishes  in  iii.  1-4 
not  merely  between  irvevixarLKOfi  and  adpKivo^  (verse  i ;  in 
verse  3  aapKUKo^;  )  or  between  Kara  avdpcoirov  TrepLTrarelv 
and  its  opposite,  (verse  3)  but  also  between  the  mere  dvOpwirov 
elvai  and  the  being  something  more  than  a  mere  man  (verse  4 
ovtc  dvOpcoiroC  iare ;  ) .  It  goes  without  saying  that  a  rhetorical 
form  of  statement  like  the  last-mentioned  ought  not  to  be  pres- 
sed, as  if  Paul  meant  to  represent  the  Christian  pneumatic  state 
as  something  super-human.  What  he  means  is  evidently  that 
the  Corinthians  had  behaved  as  ordinary  men,  who  were  no 
more  than  what  man  is  by  nature.  Still  the  paradoxical  form 
in  which  the  thought  finds  expression  bears  strong  witness  to 
the  fact  that  Paul  looked  upon  the  Christian  state  as  something 
belonging  to  a  totally  different  order  of  affairs  from  the  state  of 
nature,  and  that  the  eschatological  contrast  was  to  him  the  only 
category  which  could  adequately  convey  this  difference.^^ 

"*  Notice  how  in  the  context  6  KSa/xas  ovtos  and  6  cUuv  oitoj  are  used 
promiscuously,  i  Cor.  i,  20,  ii,  6,  12,  iii.  18,  19. 

"  Reitzenstein,  Die  Hellenistischen  Mysterienreligionen,  1910,  proposes 
an  interpretation  of  the  antithesis  \J/vxtK6i  —irvevfiaTiKSs,  which  would  detach 
it  altogether  from  its  eschatological  background,  and  in  the  place  of  this 
make  it  a  form  of  expression  of  the  essentially  Hellenistic  and  Gnostic 
contrast  between  the  supernatural  world  of  the  spiritual  and  the  natural 
world  of  sense.  According  to  him  the  technical  sense  of  \//vxi-k6s  arose 
from  the  belief  that  in  the  mysteries  through  regeneration  a  new  ego 
is  created  which  traverses  the  heavens  and  attains  to  the  vision  of  God. 
This  new  ego  is  distinct  from  and  replaces  the  old  se\i=\l/vx'6,  because  it 
is  deified.     Holy  Spirit  has  entered  into  such  an  one,  his  own  person  he 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL  249 

The  passage  just  examined  suggests  the  query  to  what  ex- 
tent, if  to  any,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  by  Paul  placed  in  contrast  to 
Satan  and  evil  spirits  in  general.  Inasmuch  as  evil  spirit- 
powers  undoubtedly  play  a  role  in  connection  with  the  present 
aeon  and  their  conquest  is  plainly  a  considerable  part  of  its  pass- 
ing away,  every  pointed  opposition  of  the  Spirit  to  such  powers 

has  left  behind.  In  the  ecstatic  state  also  the  God  who  enters,  mentem 
priorem  expulit,  atque  hominem  toto  sibi  cedere  jussit  pectore  (quoted 
from  Lucanus).  Here  i/'vx'^=self  and  irvevtia  are  mutually  exclusive 
(pp.  44-46).  What  the  pneuma  produces  is  a  "  Gottwesen  "  (p.  55),  the 
process  is  an  Airodiuais  ,  and  in  this  sense  Reitzenstein  interprets  the 
Pauline  terms  Bo^d^eip  and  fjLeTafju)p<povv  (p.  168.)  The  irvevfiariKSs  is  "  iiber- 
haupt  nicht  mehr  Mensch "  (p.  168).  Pfleiderer's  quotation  from 
Rohde's  Psyche,  in  Urchristenthum^  I,  p.  266,  also  suggests  the  same  solu- 
tion. Reitzenstein  is  well  aware  that  such  ideas  must  have  stood  in  flagrant 
contradiction  to  Paul's  fundamental  type  of  thought,  because,  as  he  him- 
self admits,  the  magical  transformation  of  a  sinful  man  into  a  "  Gott- 
wesen "  runs  contrary  to  the  profound  moral  earnestness  of  the  Jewish  re- 
ligion (p.  56.)  He  further  admits  that  Paul  has  not  been  able  to 
surmount  this  contradiction  (ib.).  The  only  thing  that  might  commend  this 
hypothesis  it  that  it  seems  to  offer  a  plausible  explanation  of  the  technical 
use  of  \I/vxik6s  .  But  even  if  this  could  not  be  explained  in  any  other  way, 
it  would  not  be  permissible  on  that  account  to  entertain  a  solution  so 
flagrantly  at  variance  with  Paul's  fundamental  religious  convictions.  As 
to  the  passages  themselves  which  Reitzenstein  discusses  at  great  length 
(Paulus  als  Pnemnatiker  pp.  160-204),  there  is  only  one  expression  that 
seems  to  favor  his  proposal,  viz.  the  depreciatory  characterization  of  the 
Corinthians  as  Aydpuiroi,  i  Cor.  iii.  4.  But,  as  has  already  been  said, 
it  would  be  absurd  to  press  this  to  the  extent  of  finding  in  it  the 
deification  of  the  Christian  and  the  denial  of  his  true  humanity.  Nor 
can  the  fact  that  in  contrast  to  ^pvxiKbs  AvOpuyiros  Paul  puts  the  simple 
irv€VfidTiK6s  (without  dvOpuiros)  in  ii.  15  be  appealed  to  in  proof  of  such 
a  view,  for  in  iii.  i,  3  both  ffapKipois  and  irvev/xariKoTs  occur  without  the 
noun.  Reitzenstein  also  argues  from  the  phrase  ret  rod  irveifiaros  rod  deoG 
in  ii.  14,  because  the  addition  of  roO  deov  is  in  his  view  intelligible  only 
on  the  supposition  that  "  previously  to  the  miraculous  transmutation  of 
being  man  and  God  belong  to  two  different  worlds".  But  the  thought  is 
all  the  time  that  the  wisdom  of  man  is  a  wisdom  of  the  /cdcr/ws  and 
of  a  definite  ald>v  of  the  Kdafws,  so  that  its  counterpart,  the  wisdom  of  God 
will  also  have  its  own  domain  in  a  definite  sphere  and  period.  It  can 
be  called  the  wisdom  of  God,  because  God  is  supreme  in  that  sphere  and 
age.  What  Paul,  therefore,  means  is  not  that  man  must  become  God,  but 
that  he  must  be  translated  from  the  KSa-fios  into  the  world  of  God.  The 
true  contrast  to  "  ye  are  men  "  in  iii.  4  is  not  "  ye  are  divine  "  but  "  ye 


250  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 

would  carry  with  it  more  or  less  of  an  eschatological  atmo- 
sphere.*®   As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  not  much  material  of 

are  of  God  and  of  Christ ",  v.  22,  and  the  same  is  implied  by  way  of  con- 
trast in  the  clauses  "  I  am  of  Paul ",  "  I  am  of  Apollos "  iii.  4.  The 
absurdity  of  this  nomenclature  does  not  lie  in  the  fact  that  they  act 
like  men  while  being  divine,  but  is  that  they  act  as  belonging  to  men,  while 
being  the  property  of  God.  And,  what  decides  everything,  in  i  Cor.  xv. 
45,  47  the  pneumatic  Christ  is  distinctly  called  "man".  Reitzenstein 
gets  around  this  only  by  altering  the  text.  He  proposes  (p.  172)  to  read 
in  V.  45  iy4vtTo  b  Avdpuiros  (instead  oi  iy^vero  6  vpQroi  Avdpuiros  "Ada/i), 
which  not  only  eliminates,  through  the  omission  of  ^pioros,  the  implication 
that  there  is  a  second  man,  but  also  imparts  the  idea  that  the  second  Adam 
is  not  man,  because  the  first  is  called  "  the  man  "  specifically.  It  might,  of 
course,  be  said,  that  the  true  manhood  of  Christ  even  so  is  presupposed  in 
his  being  called  6  Se&repos  Avdpunros  in  v.  47,  but  Reitzenstein  interprets 
this  on  the  basis  of  a  belief  on  Paul's  part  in  a  God  named  "AvOpuiros  (with 
a  capital),  which  (^d  is  identified  with  Christ,  so  as  to  warrant  the 
conclusion,  that  the  latter  is  TTPeO/w.  ^cooiroiSv  (p.  173.)  This  change  of 
the  text  is  absolutely  uncalled  for,  and  the  introduction  of  a  (}od  'Avdpunros 
entirely  foreign  to  the  Apostle's  trend  of  thought,  which  is  throughout 
governed  by  the  principle  of  the  true  unity  and  parallelism  between  Christ's 
human  nature  and  ours  as  appears  with  sufficient  clearness  from  v.  21 : 
"  For  since  Si  dvdpdirov  came  death,  <Jt'  AvOpdrtrov  came  also  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead."  The  "mere  man"  who  is  transcended  by  the  "deified 
man "  Reitzenstein  also  would  find  in  2  Cor.  xii.  4 :  "  which  it  is  not 
lawful  for  a  man  (i.  e.  'a  mere  man')  to  utter."  This  may  be  answered 
by  pointing  to  v.  2  where  the  recipient  of  the  revelation  described,  i.  e. 
a  highly  pneumatic  subject,  is  spoken  of  as  "  a  man  in  Christ ".  Reitzen- 
stein, to  be  sure  thinks  he  can  escape  the  force  of  this  by  taking  "  a  man 
in  Christ "  as  one  idea  =:  a  pneumatic  person.  Still  even  so  he  remains 
to  Paul  a  man,  and  besides  in  v.  3  we  have  the  simple  "  such  a  man  " 
(without  iv  XpKTry*).  The  whole  explanation  of  ^i;xtK6s  f rom  the  ecstatic 
state  breaks  down,  because  in  ecstasy,  as  defined  by  Philo  and  others, 
the  xf/vx-^  of  man  simply  vacates  and,  far  from  forming  a  new  divine 
subject,  the  man  becomes  a  receptacle  for  the  divine  Pneuma,  The  man 
disappears  and  God  takes  his  place:  the  technical  phrase  is  Kar^x^adax  ix 
6eov.  The  contrast  between  a  "  psychical  "  and  a  "  pneumatic  "  man  can- 
not have  arisen  through  reflection  upon  this.  As  to  the  impossibility  of 
irvevfjMTiKSi  meaning  in  contrast  to  ^i;xt'c6s  "  one  who  has  not  only  a  ^vx'J 
but  also  the  nwO/ta,"  to  which  Reitzenstein  appeals  in  support  of  his  view, 
we  may  refer  to  Zielinski  in  Theol.  Literaturz.  191 1,  no.  24,  col.  740,  who 
shows  that  the  contrast  between  proletarius  and  assiduus  is  of  precisely 
the  same  nature,  the  former  being  one  who  has  only  children,  the  latter 
one  who  has  landed  property,  but  is  not  necessarily  childless. 

"Cf.  the  Synoptical  statement,  Mt.  xii.  28  =  Lk.  xi.  20  (where,  how- 
ever, iv  8aKH\(fi  deov  takes  the  place  of  the  ip  vve^naTi    deoOin  Mt.). 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL  251 

this  nature  can  be  gleaned  from  the  Pauline  epistles.  As  we 
have  seen  in  i  Cor.  ii.  12  the  kosmos  has  its  own  spirit  which 
governs  the  psychical  man.  At  the  same  time  the  kosmos  has 
its  own  rulers  in  the  supernatural  sphere,  for  of  such  the 
upxovre^  rod  alSivo<;  rovrov  in  verse  6  will  probably  have  to 
be  understood.  It  is  not  clear  whether  in  verse  12  the  concep- 
tion of  ''  receiving ''  the  spirit  of  the  kosmos  points  to  a  trans- 
cendental influence  brought  to  bear  upon  men  from  the  outside. 
If  so,  it  will  be  natural  to  connect  this  irveOfMa  rod  Koafiov  with 
the  apxovre^  rod  aiSivo^  rovrov  .  It  must  also  be  remem- 
bered that  Satan  is  called  in  2  Cor.  iv.  4  6  deo^  tou  alSivo^ 
rovrov ,  and  the  very  point  of  this  bold  comparison  seems  to 
lie  in  this  that,  as  the  true  God  by  his  Spirit  illumines  the  minds 
of  believers  enabling  them  to  behold  the  glory  of  Christ  in  the 
gospel,  so  the  false  God  of  the  present  age,  has  a  counter- 
spirit  at  work  (or  is  a  counter-spirit)  which  blinds  the  minds 
of  the  unbelieving  that  the  light  of  the  gospel  of  the  glory 
of  Christ  should  not  dawn  upon  them.  Here  both  the  con- 
ception of  ho^a  as  the  content  of  the  gospel  and  the  parallel- 
ism between  the  first  and  the  second  creation  in  verse  6  impart 
an  unmistakable  eschatological  flavor  to  the  comparison. 
Where  the  thought  of  the  wisdom-passage  in  i  Cor.  ii.  recurs 
later  in  Col.  ii.  2  ff.  with  many  striking  reminiscences  even 
as  to  the  form,  the  contrast  becomes  one  purely  between 
Christ  and  the  spirits,  and  the  conception  of  the  irvevfia  rov 
KoafjLov  in  its  opposition  to  the  rrvevfia  to  Ik  rov  deov 
does  not  reappear.  This  suggests  that  the  relative  ab- 
sence of  the  antithesis  between  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  evil 
spirits  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that,  wherever  such  compari- 
sons occur  with  Paul,  Christ  himself  is  personally  opposed  to 
the  Satanic  power  and  the  Spirit  not  explicitly  mentioned.^^ 
In  Eph.  ii.  2  on  the  other  hand  we  read  again,  as  in  i  Cor.  ii. 
12,  of  a  "  pneuma  that  now  works  in  the  sons  of  disobedience  ", 
which  pneuma  is  moreover  distinctly  associated  with  the  aeon 
of  this  present  kosmos,  so  that  the  corresponding  conception 

"  Cf.   Col.   i.   II,  where  the    i^ov<ria    toO    o-kStovs   is  contrasted  with  the 

fiaffiXela  rod  vlov  and  only  the  characterization  of  the  inheritance  of  the 

saints  as  a  KXijpos  ip  ry  (purl  reminds  of  the  domain  of  the   Spirit.  Cf. 
further  ii.  9,  15. 


2S2  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

of  a  Spirit  belonging  to  the  age  to  come  inevitably  obtrudes 
itself,  a  point  further  favored  by  the  fact  that  the  formula 
elsewhere  characteristic  of  conformity  to  the  Holy  Spirit  as  an 
ethical  iK)wer  here  occurs  of  conformity  to  the  opposite  prin- 
ciple, TrepiTrarelv  Karh  top  alwva  tov  KoajjLOv  tovtov,  Kar^  rov 
dpxoma  t^9  i^ovala^  tov  aepo^  .  Also  the  ivepyeiv  ascribed 
to  the  evil  spirit  reminds  of  the  energizing  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  cf .  I  Cor.  xii.  1 1 ;  Eph.  iii.  20.  Finally  the  Koa-fiox- 
pdropei  rov  <tk6tov^  toutov,  t^  Trvev/jLaTiKo,  t^9  irovrjpia^  iv 
T019  eirovpavCoifs  of  Eph.  vi.  12  may  be  mentioned  here,  al- 
though the  implied  contrast  to  the  Spirit  of  God  is  not  so 
clearly  present. 

Quite  a  large  sphere  would  have  to  be  annexed  to  this  rubric, 
if  it  could  be  proven  on  the  one  hand  that  the  aroix^la  rov 
Koa/xov  appearing  in  Galatians  and  Colossians  are  meant  by 
Paul  as  world-spirits  or  spirits  of  the  elements,  and  on  the 
other  hand  that  Paul  connects  the  adp^  directly  with  the  rule 
of  evil  spirits.  In  the  case  of  the  orroLxda  the  opposition  to 
the  Holy  Spirit  would  be  of  an  implied  nature,  rather  than 
explicit:  still  Gal.  iii.  3  compared  with  iii.  6  might  be 
quoted  in  support  of  this.  In  Colossians  it  is  Christ,  not  the 
Spirit  who  forms  the  contrast  to  the  a-rotxela  ,  ii.  8,  20.^^  In  re- 
gard to  the  adp^  the  correlation  with  the  Pneuma  is  undisputed, 
but  here  no  proof  can  be  adduced  of  any  constant  association  in 
the  mind  of  Paul  between  it  and  the  world  of  evil  spirits.  This 
could  be  done  only  by  connecting  the  adp^  with  the  aroix^lay 
a  connection  in  no  wise  indicated  by  any  Pauline  passage.^® 

"^For  the  modern  discussion  on  the  (rroixtta  cf.  Hilgenfeld,  Der 
Galaterhrief,  1852,  pp.  66  ff.,  and  ZlVTh.,  1858,  pp.  99  ff. ;  i860,  pp. 
208  flf. ;  1866,  pp.  314  ff. ;  Schaubach,  Commentatio  qua  exponitur  quid 
aroi.x^ui  TOV  KixTfjuov  in  N.T.  sibi  velint,  1862;  Schneckenburger,  TheoL 
Jahrb.  1848,  pp.  445  ff. ;  Klopper,  Der  Brief  an  die  Kolosser,  1882,  pp.  361 
ff.,  Blom,  Theol.  Tydschr.,  1883,  pp.  4  ff. ;  Spitta,  Der  sweite  Brief  des 
Petrus,  1885;  Everling,  Die  Paulinische  Angelologie  und  Ddmonologie,. 
1888,  pp.  65  ff. ;  Diels,  Elementum,  1899;  Deissman's  art.  Elements  in 
Enc.  Bib.;  Dibelius,  Die  Geisterwelt  im  Glauben  des  Paulus,  1909,  pp.  78  ff., 
136  ff.,  227  ff. 

'*  Gal.  iii.  3  stands  too  far  removed  from  iv.  3,  9  to  come  under  con- 
sideration here,  and  besides  too  plainly  refers  to  "  works  of  the  law  ",  as 
the  concrete  form  of  the  cdp^.    Bruckner,  Die  Entstehung  der  Paulinischen 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL  253 

The  above  discussion,  aside  from  its  inherent  interest  has  a 
bearing  on  certain  important  BibHco-theological  problems. 
This  we  briefly  indicate  in  conclusion. 

In  the  first  place  the  eschatological  conception  of  the  Spirit 
and  his  work  is  perhaps  adapted  to  throw  light  upon  what  is 
most  striking  and  characteristic  in  Paul's  entire  treatment  of 
the  subject  of  the  Spirit.  This  consists  in  the  thoroughness 
with  which  the  pneumatic  factor  is  equally  distributed  over 
the  entire  range  of  the  Christian  life,  so  that  from  the  sub- 
jective side  the  Christian  and  the  pneumatic  become  inter- 
changeable, and  especially  in  the  emphasis  with  which  the 
center  of  the  Spirit's  operation  is  placed  in  the  ethico-religious 
sphere.  Wth  such  thoroughness  and  emphasis  this  had  not 
been  done  before  Paul.     GunkeP^  has  no  doubt  exaggerated 

Christologie,  1903,  pp.  210  ff.  attempts  to  establish  a  connection  between 
demoniacal  powers  and  the  cdp^  as  the  principle  of  sin.  He  is  not,  how- 
ever, able  to  quote  anything  in  support  of  this  except  2  Cor.  xi.  3,  which 
proves  nothing,  and  the  general  observation  that  the  fMrai&njs  and  <l>eopd  to 
which  the  creation  is  subject  have  a  demoniacal  background,  which  does  not 
appear  either  in  Rom.  viii.  20,  21  or  anywhere  else.  DibeliUs,  who  care- 
fully traces  all  the  demonological  references  and  allusions  in  Paul,  and  even 
recognizes  in  'Afiaprla  and  Qdvaros  personal  spirits,  is  entirely  silent  about 
the  o-dpl  . 

'^  Die  Wirkungen  des  Heiligen  Geistes  nach  der  popular  en  Anschauung 
der  apostolischen  Zeit  und  nach  der  Lehre  des  Apostels  Paulus,  1888,  2d 
ed.  1899.  Sokolowski,  p.  199  is  more  fair  in  the  estimate  placed  upon  the 
Old  Testament  statements  in  regard  to  the  ethical  functions  of  the  Spirit ; 
as  to  the  early  apostolic  teaching  he  throws  out  this  caution  that  much  may 
have  existed  in  the  minds  of  the  first  Christians,  of  which  no  record  is 
made  in  Acts,  and  so  with  reference  to  Jesus.  Still,  where  the  sources  do 
not  speak,  he  deems  it  scientifically  more  correct  "  vor  der  Hand  "  to  deny 
to  Jesus  and  the  early  church  the  specific  Pauline  conceptions  than  the 
reverse,  p.  196.  Volz,.pp.  194  fif.  thinks  that  the  contrast  as  usually  drawn 
between  Synoptics-Acts  and  Paul  is  wrong,  that  there  should  be 
substituted  for  it  the  contrast  between  Matthew  and  Mark  on  the  one 
hand  and  Luke  and  Paul  on  the  other  hand,  that  is,  the  contrast  between 
Palestinian  Christianity  and  Pauline-Hellenic  world-Christianity.  But  why 
not  say  that  it  is  simply  a  contrast  between  the  records  of  the  earlier  and 
the  records  of  later  history,  so  that  the  prominence  of  the  Spirit  in 
the  documents  reflects  the  lesser  or  greater  prominence  of  the  Spirit  in  the 
development  of  events?  That  Luke  in  the  Gospel  makes  more  of  the  Spirit 
than  Matthew  is  contraindicated  by  his  substituting  xi.  20  iv  8aKT6\q}  for  iv 
irve^fxari  Mt.   xii.  28. 


254 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 


the  originality  of  Paul  in  this  respect  and  underestimated  the 
preparation  made  for  this  development  by  the  Old  Testament 
prophetic  and  earlier  New  Testament  teaching.  Still  a  simple 
comparison  between  the  Petrine  speeches  in  Acts  and  the  Paul- 
ine statements  abundantly  shows,  that  Paul  was  the  first  to  as- 
cribe to  the  Spirit  that  dominating  place  and  that  pervasive  uni- 
form activity,  which  secure  to  him  alongside  of  the  Father  and 
the  Son  a  necessary  relation  to  the  Christian  state  at  every 
point.  The  question  arises  whether  we  can  trace  in  Paul's 
teaching  the  roots  out  of  which  this  conception  of  the  Spirit 
grew,  or  at  least  the  other  elements  in  his  thought  to  which  it 
sustained  from  its  very  birth  a  relation  of  interdependence  and 
mutual  adjustment.  Probably  more  than  one  factor  will  here 
have  to  be  taken  into  account.  The  theocentric  bent  of  Paul's 
mind  makes  for  the  conclusion  that  in  the  Christian  life  all 
must  be  from  God  and  for  God,  and  the  Spirit  of  God  would 
be  the  natural  agent  for  securing  this.  The  impotence  of  sin- 
ful human  nature  for  good,  one  of  the  Apostle's  profoundest 
convictions,  would  likewise  postulate  the  operation  of  the 
Spirit  along  the  whole  range  of  ethical  movement  and  activity. 
The  marvellous  efflorescence  of  a  new  ethical  life  among  the 
early  Christians  in  its  contrast  with  pagan  immorality,  and 
its  impulsiveness  and  spontaneity  as  compared  with  Jewish 
formalism,  would  of  themselves  point  to  a  miraculous,  super- 
natural source,  which  could  be  none  other  than  the  Spirit  of 
God.  Still  further,  the  fact  that  to  Paul  the  Spirit  is  preemi- 
nently the  Spirit  of  Christ  and  therefore  as  thoroughly  equable 
and  ethical  in  his  activity  as  the  mind  of  Jesus  himself,  will 
have  to  be  remembered  here.  But,  alongside  of  all  these  mo- 
tives, there  worked  probably  as  the  first  and  most  influential 
cause  the  idea  that  it  is  the  Spirit  of  God  who  gives  form  and 
character  to  the  eschatological  life  in  the  broadest  and  most 
pervasive  sense,  that  the  coming  age  is  the  age  of  the  Spirit 
par  excellence,  so  that  all  that  enters  into  it,  forms  part  of  it, 
or  takes  place  in  it,  must  necessarily  be  baptized  into  the 
Pneuma  as  into  an  omnipresent  element  and  thus  itself  become 
"  spiritual  "  in  its  mode  of  existence  and  quality.  This  will 
explain  not  only  the  uniform  and  equable  infusion  of  the  Spirit 
into  the  Christian  life  at  every  point;  it  also  accounts  for  the 


I 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  255 

Strong  emphasis  thrown  upon  the  ethico-religious  Hfe  as  within 
the  larger  sphere  the  most  characteristic  of  all  the  Spirit's  pro- 
ducts. For  if  the  Spirit  be  the  Spirit  of  the  alwv  yueXXcoz/,  then 
his  most  distinctive  task  must  lie  where  the  coming  aeon  is  most 
sharply  differentiated  in  principle  from  the  present  age.  And 
this,  as  all  the  Pauline  references  to  the  two  aeons  go  to  prove, 
is  the  ethical  quality  of  both.  The  alonv  iveardy;  is  before  all 
other  things  an  aiwv  Trovrjpo^,  Gal.  i.  4.  One  to  whom  this 
ethical  contrast  stood  in  the  foreground,  and  who  was  at  the 
same  time  accustomed  to  view  the  future  aeon  as  the  world  of 
the  Spirit,  would  of  necessity  be  thereby  led  to  place  the  ethico- 
religious  transformation  at  the  center  of  the  Spirit's  activity. 
He  would  interpret  not  only  the  whole  Christian  life  in  terms 
of  the  Spirit,  but  would  also  regard  the  newness  of  the  moral 
and  religious  life  as  a  fruit  of  the  Spirit  in  its  highest  po- 
tency.®^ 

Our  second  inference  concerns  the  Apostle's  Christology. 
A  widely  current  modern  construction  of  the  Pauline  doctrine 

"^  The  question  may  properly  be  raised  at  this  point  whether  Paul's 
characteristic  conception  of  the  adp^  does  not  likewise  have  its  eschat- 
ological  antecedents.  It  is  so  antithetically  determined  by  its  correlative,, 
the  Pneuma,  that  a  certain  illumination  of  the  one  must  more  or  less 
affect  the  coloring  of  the  other.  To  discuss  the  question  here  would  lead 
us  too  far  afield.  We  confine  ourselves  to  the  following.  While  the 
<rdp|  chiefly  appears  as  a  power  or  principle  in  the  subjective  experience 
of  man,  yet  this  is  by  no  means  the  only  aspect  under  which  Paul  re- 
gards it.  It  is  an  organism,  an  order  of  things  beyond  the  individual 
man,  even  beyond  human  nature.  It  is  something  that  is  not  inherently 
evil,  the  evil  predicates  are  joined  to  it  by  means  of  a  synthetic  judg- 
ment. Still  further  it  has  its  affiliations  and  ramifications  in  the  ex- 
ternal, physical,  natural  (as  opposed  to  supernatural)  constitution  of 
things.  Now  if  adp^  was  originally  the  characteristic  designation  of  the 
first  world-order,  as  Pneuma  is  that  of  the  second,  all  these  features 
could  be  easily  accounted  for  without  having  recourse  to  Hellenistic- 
dualistic  explanations.  From  its  association  with  the  entire  present  aeon, 
the  adp^  could  derive  its  pervasive,  comprehensive  significance,  in  virtue 
of  which  a  man  can  be  iv  aapd  as  he  can  be  ^j'  irveipjoLTi;  like  the  aeon 
it  lends  a  uniform  complexion  to  all  existing  things.  It  would  also  de- 
rive from  this  its  partial  coincidence  with  the  somatic,  because  the  whole 
first  aeon  moves  on  the  external,  provisional,  physical  plane.  Finally  it 
would  derive  from  this  its  synonymy  with  evil,  for  according  to  Paul,  the 
present  aeon  has  become  an  evil  aeon  in  its  whole  extent. 


256  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN   PAUL 

of  Christ  finds  in  the  Spirit  that  element  which  formed  the 
true  inner  essence  of  the  Son  of  God  in  his  preexistent  state, 
so  that  his  being  the  Son  of  God,  and  his  being  the  Spirit  come 
to  express  the  same  thing,  the  one  from  a  formal  the  other 
from  a  material  point  of  view.  Christ  carried  over  this  origi- 
nal pneumatic  character  from  the  preexistent  state  into  his 
earthly  life  and  from  his  earthly  life  again  into  the  post-resur- 
rection state,  the  only  difference  being  that,  while  in  the  first 
and  the  third  stages  the  Spirit  ruled  supreme,  in  the  inter- 
mediate stage  hi^  presence  was  obscured  and  his  activity  re- 
pressed by  the  <rdp^  \  In  this  construction  the  place  of  the 
divine  nature  is  taken  by  the  pneumatic  personality.  The  ab- 
solute sense  of  the  fJ'Op<j>rj  deov  of  Phil.  ii.  6  is  weakened  so 
as  to  make  it  appear  the  equivalent  of  the  eUoyp  6eov  or  the 
So^a  deov  of  which  elsewhere  Paul  represents  Christ  as  the 
bearer.  For  the  divine  Christ  is  substituted  a  Spirit-being,  a 
creature  of  high  rank  but  still  a  creature.®^  Now,  if  we  have 
succeeded  to  any  degree  in  elucidating  the  actual  perspective 
in  which  the  Christ-Pneuma  appears  with  Paul,  it  will  be  easily 
felt  what  gross  violence  this  modern  construction  does  to  the 

"  Especially  Bruckner  in  his  work  Die  Entstehung  der  Pawlinischen 
Christologie,  1903,  has  strenuously  advocated  this  theory,  in  the  special 
form  that  he  places  the  origin  of  this  pneumatic  Christology  back  of 
Paul  in  Judaism.  According  to  him  the  "  Wesensveranderung "  of  the 
Messiah  into  a  pneumatic  person  was  due  to  this  that  the  enemies  of  the 
Messiah  had  come  to  be  regarded  as  celestial  powers,  angels  and  de- 
mons, no  longer  as  mere  men  p.  116.  In  order  to  make  him  equal  to  the 
requirements  of  a  conquest  of  these,  it  was  necessary  to  believe  him  super- 
human. But  it  is  far  from  clear  why  pneumatic  endowment  should  not 
have  been  thought  sufficient  for  this.  As  a  matter  of  fact  all  that  Bruckner 
succeeds  in  gleaning  from  the  apocalyptic  literature  amounts  to  no  more 
than  this.  Of  equipment  we  read  in  Psalt.  Sol.  xvii.  37;  xviii.  7.  As  to 
Enoch  (Similit.)  Bruckner  himself  admits,  that  the  author  does  not  reflect 
upon  the  relation  between  the  Messiah  and  God,  p.  140.  Here  also  we 
meet  with  the  idea  of  equipment,  xlix.  3.  To  be  sure  he  thinks  that 
here  the  endowment  with  the  Spirit  is  more  of  a  "  Wesensbestimmung " 
than  in  Psalt.  Sol.,  but  this  is  scarcely  borne  out  by  the  facts  p.  144. 
The  only  thing  Briickner  can  find  in  4  Ezr.  to  connect  the  Messiah  with 
the  Spirit  is  the  stream  of  fire  proceeding  from  him  for  the  destruction 
of  his  enemies,  xiii.  9-1 1,  p.  156,  but  this  is  rather  far-fetched.  In  the 
Ap.  of  Bar.  there  is  no  reference  to  the  Messianic  Spirit  at  all.  In 
Test.  XII  Pat.  we  have  again  the  idea  of  endowment,  Test.  Lev.  18, 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  257 

main  principle  which  governs  that  part  of  the  Apostle's  teach- 
ing. For  we  have  found  that  the  peculiar  identification  be- 
tween Christ  and  the  Spirit,  on  which  the  construction  de- 
pends, is  dated  by  Paul  from  the  resurrection,  that  it  has  a 
strictly  eschatological  significance,  that  it  is  used  exclusively 
to  describe  what  Christ  is  in  his  Messianic  capacity  with  ref- 
erence to  believers,  and  never  recurred  upon  to  define  the  origi- 
nal constitution  of  Christ's  Person  as  such.  Paul  everywhere 
approaches  the  endowment  of  Christ  with  the  Spirit  from  an 
eschatological-soteriological  point  of  view,  and  the  fundamen- 
tal error  of  this  modern  reproduction  of  his  Christological 
teaching  arises  from  its  failure  to  appreciate  that  fact.  What 
the  Apostle  places  at  the  end  of  the  Messianic  process  is  mis- 
takenly carried  back  into  the  earlier  life  of  the  Messianic 
Person  and  there  made  to  do  service  for  explaining  the  mys- 
tery of  the  origin  of  the  Son  of  God.  The  fallacy  of  this 
procedure  will  become  doubly  apparent  by  observing,  that  on 
the  one  hand,  where  Paul  introduces  the  pneumatic  Christ  he 
uniformly  refers  to  the  state  of  exaltation,  and  on  the  other 
hand,  where  he  speaks  of  the  preexistent  Christ  every  reference 
to  the  Pneuma  is  conspicuously  absent.  Paul  himself  did  not 
confound,  as  his  modern  interpreters  do,  what  belongs  to 
Christ  as  a  Person  and  what  belongs  to  him  in  virtue  of  his 
office. 

The  third  and  last  observation  suggested  by  our  inquiry 
touches  the  heart  of  the  Pauline  pneumatology  itself.  It  is 
often  asserted  by  representatives  of  a  certain  school  of  theo- 
logical thought,  that  the  development  of  New  Testament  doc- 
trine moves  along  the  line  of  "  deeschatologization."  The 
great  service  rendered  both  by  Jesus  in  his  teaching  on  the 
present  kingdom  and  by  Paul  in  his  teaching  on  justification 
and  the  life  in  the  Spirit  is  held  to  consist  in  this,  that  they 
translated  the  transcendental  blessedness  expected  from  a  fu- 
ture world  into  experiences  and  privileges  of  a  purely  imma- 
nent character  to  be  enjoyed  now  and  here  below.  To  the 
same  degree  as  they  succeeded  in  doing  this  they  divested  the 
eschatological  of  its  intrinsic  importance  and  made  it  a  mere 
fringe  or  form  to  the  true  substance  of  Christianity  which  can 
and  does  exist  independently  of   it.     It  would  seem  to  us 


358  ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL 

that  in  most  representations  of  this  kind  the  dislike  of  the 
eschatological  revealed  springs  from  a  suspicious  mo- 
tive. It  is  easy  to  speak  disparagingly  of  the  gross  realistic 
expectations  of  the  Jews,  but  those,  who  do  so,  often  under 
the  pretense  of  a  refined  spiritualism  attack  the  very  essence  of 
Biblical  supernaturalism.  At  bottom  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  evo- 
lutionary philosophy,  which  here  voices  its  protest  against  the 
idea  of  consummation,  as  at  the  other  end  of  the  line  of  Bibli- 
cal history  it  protests  against  the  idea  of  creation.  Besides  the 
supernatural  it  is  the  soteriological  that  is^resented  in  eschat- 
ology.  The  eschatological  is  nothing  else  but  supernaturalism 
and  soteriology  in  the  strongest  possible  solution. ^^  Hence  the 
religion  of  the  present,  what  is  so  highly  extolled  in  Jesus  and 
Paul,  is  depicted  largely  in  the  colors  of  an  ideal  natural  re- 
ligion. The  eschatological  kingdom  not  merely  becomes  pres- 
ent, but  the  present  kingdom  becomes  a  mere  matter  of  son- 
ship  and  righteousness  without  redemptive  setting  and  realized 
by  subjective  internal  processes.  And  the  essence  of  the  Chris- 
tian state,  as  Paul  describes  it,  is  sought  in  much  the  same 
things.  The  "  Spirit  "  is  supposed  to  stand  for  that  side  of  the 
Apostle's  conception  of  religion,  on  which  it  is  least  affected 
by  the  abnormal,  the  miraculous,  in  a  word  for  the  "  spiritual  " 
in  the  conventional  sense  of  that  term.  We,  therefore,  have 
to  do  here  not  with  an  innocent  shift  from  the  future  to  the 
present,  but  with  a  radical  change  from  one  clearly  defined 
type  of  religion  to  another.^*  With  the  setting  aside  of  the 
eschatological  something  else  of  inestimable  value  and  im- 
portance that  lies  enshrined  in  it  and  cannot  exist  without  it, 
evaporates. 

"This  goes  far  to  account  for  the  modern  dislike  of  the  Messianic 
consciousness  of  Jesus  and  the  doubt  of  its  historicity.  Messianism  is 
the  most  typical  expression  of  an  eschatological  world-view  and  carries 
with  it  all  the  implications  of  the  latter. 

**  In  a  recent  work  by  Von  Dobschiitz,  The  Eschatology  of  the  Gos- 
pels, 1910,  this  tendency  finds  typical  expression.  The  author  speaks  of 
Jesus'  doctrine  of  the  present  kingdom  as  "transmuted  eschatology". 
Transmutation  implies  that  a  change  in  character  and  tone,  not  in  mere 
chronology,  has  taken  place.  "Anticipation  of  eschatology"  would  far 
more  accurately  describe  the  actual  process  both  in  the  mind  of  Jesus 
and  of  Paul. 


ESCHATOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRIT  IN  PAUL  259 

If  our  investigation  has  shown  anything,  it  has  shown 
how  utterly  foreign  all  this  is  to  the  plain  intent  of  the 
Apostle's  teaching  on  the  Spirit.  For  Paul  the  Spirit  was 
regularly  associated  with  the  world  to  come  and  from  the 
Spirit  thus  conceived  in  all  his  supernatural  and  redemptive 
potency  the  Christian  life  receives  throughout  its  specific  char- 
acter. In  the  combination  of  these  two  ideas,  that  the  Spirit 
belongs  to  the  alodv  /leXkcov  and  that  he  determines  the  present 
life,  we  have  the  most  impressive  witness  for  the  thorough- 
going supernaturalness  of  Paul's  interpretation  of  Christianity. 
In  its  origin  and  in  the  source  from  which  in  continuance  its 
life  is  fed  Christianity  is  as  little  of  this  world  as  the  future 
life  is  of  this  world.  The  conception  of  the  Spirit  proves  that 
what  Paul  meant  to  do  is  precisely  the  opposite  of  what  is 
imputed  to  him.  Not  to  "  transmute  "  the  eschatological  into 
a  religion  of  time,  but  to  raise  the  religion  of  time  to  the 
plane  of  eternity — such  was  the  purport  of  his  gospel. 


I 


\ 


^■^^• 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 
Robert  Dick  Wilson 


Purpose  of  the  article  is  to  review  certain  statements  of  Dr.  Driver 
about  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel. 

Citation  of  Dr.  Driver's  statements. 

The  four  propositions  contained  in  these  statements. 

A.  Discussion  of  the  first  proposition,  that  Daniel  belongs  to  the  Western 

Aramaic. 

1.  Proof  that  the  preformative  ' y'  was  not  in  Daniel's  time  a 
distinctive  mark  of  Western  Aramaic. 

2.  Proof  that  the  ending  a  retained  its  definite  sense  up  to  400 
B.  C.  among  the  Eastern  Arameans. 

B.  Discussion  of  the  second  proposition,  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is 

all  but  identical^  with  that  of  Ezra. 

C.  Discussion  of  the  third  proposition,  that  it  is  nearly  allied  to  that 

of  the  Targum  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan  and  to  that  of  the  Naba- 
teans  and  the  Palmyrenes. 
I.    Signs  and  sounds. 

I.  Use  of  Aleph.  2.  Use  of  Wau.  3.  Use  of  He. 

4.  Use  of  Lomadh.       5.  Use  of  d  and  z.     6.  Use  of  m  and  n. 

7.  Further  discussion  of  n. 

8.  Interchange  of  Sadhe,  Ayin  and  Qoph. 

9.  Use  of  other  letters. 
II.     Forms  and  Inflections. 

I.  Pronouns.    2.  Nouns.    3.  Particles.    4.  Verbs. 

a.  Imperfect  of  the  Lomadh  Aleph   (He)  verbs. 

b.  The  Hophal.  c.    The  Pe'il. 

d.  The  3rd  pi.  fem.  perfect. 

e.  The  Nun  of  Pe  Nun  verbs  in  the  imperfect. 

f.  'n*K  g.     Shaphel. 

h.     The  preformative  He  in  the  causative  stem. 

III.  Syntax :  the  manner  of  denoting  the  direct  object. 

IV.  Vocabulary. 

a.  Of   Onkelos. 

1.  Verbs  denoting  the  idea  "to  put". 

2.  Foreign  words  employed. 

(i)  Greek.     (2)  Persian.     (3)  Babylonian. 

b.  Of  the  Nabateans. 

c.  Of  the  Palmyrenes. 

d.  Of  the  Targum  of  Jonathan. 

D.  Discussion  of  the  fourth  proposition,  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is 

that  which  was   spoken   in  or   near  Palestine  at  a  date  after  the 

conquest  of  Palestine  by  Alexander  the  Great. 
Conclusion:     The  evidence  points  to  Babylon  as  the  place  and  the 
latter  part  of  the  6th  century  B.  C.  as  the  time  of  the  composition  of 
Daniel. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

Every  student  of  the  Old  Testament  who  has  read  the  chap- 
ter on  Daniel  in  Dr.  Driver's  Literature  of  the  Old  Testament 
(LOT  latest  edition  1910)  must  have  been  forcibly  struck  by 
the  arguments  presented  in  favor  of  a  late  date  for  the  book 
which  are  based  upon  the  alleged  agreement  between  the  Ara- 
maic contained  in  it  and  that  found  in  the  dialects  of  the 
Nabateans,  of  the  Palmyrenes,  and  of  the  Targums  of  Onke- 
los  and  Jonathan.  So  impressed  was  the  writer  of  this  arti- 
cle by  the  significance  of  these  statements,  backed  up  as  they 
are  by  an  imposing  array  of  evidence,  that  he  determined  to 
undertake  a  new  investigation  of  the  whole  problem  of  the 
relations  existing  between  the  various  dialects  of  Aramaic. 
Such  an  undertaking  necessarily  involved  as  complete  an  in- 
vestigation as  was  possible  of  the  documents  which  consti- 
tute the  extant  literature  of  these  dialects,  in  so  far  as  they 
bear  upon  grammar  and  lexicography.  Fortunately,  a  large 
part  of  the  work  involved  in  the  investigation  had  already 
been  completed  by  him.  But,  needless  to  remark,  the  ac- 
complishment of  such  a  task — and  the  writer  does  not  regard 
it  as  yet  accomplished,  although  he  is  firmly  convinced  that 
further  investigation  will  only  serve  to  strengthen  and  con- 
firm the  conclusions  which  he  has  put  forward  in  this  article — 
would  have  been  utterly  impossible,  had  there  not  been  already 
to  hand  so  many  grammars,  lexicons,  and  texts,  of  scientific 
value.  Largely  for  convenience  of  treatment  the  writer  has 
divided  the  material  into  ten  parts,  each  of  which  he  calls  a 
dialect.  These  dialects  are  ( i )  Northern  Aramaic,  embracing 
all  inscriptions  found  outside  of  Egypt  down  to  the  year  400 
B.C.,  (2)  Egypto-Aramaic,  (3)  Daniel,  (4)  Ezra,  (5)  the 
Nabatean  inscriptions,  (6)  the  Palmyrene,  (7)  the  Targum  of 
Onkelos,    (8)   the  Syriac,    (9)   the  Mandean,  and    (10)   the 


264  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

Samaritan.  The  works  to  which  he  has  been  most  indebted  are 
the  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Semiticarum  and  the  works  of  De 
Vogue,  Euting,  Pognon,  Sayce-Cowley,  Sachau,  Littmann, 
Cooke,  Lidzbarski,  Brederek,  Noldeke,  Petermann,  Kautzsch, 
Strack,  Marti,  Brockelmann,  Norberg,  Levy  and  Dalman. 
The  invaluable  Sachau  papyri  (Leipzig,  Heinrichs  191 1)  ar- 
rived in  time  to  be  made  available  in  their  bearing  upon  most 
of  the  points  discussed. 

The  views  advanced  by  Dr.  Driver  to  which  the  writer 
takes  exception  will  be  found  on  pages  502r4,  and  508  of  his 
LOT,  where  we  read  as  follows: 

"  The  Aramaic  of  David  (which  is  all  but  identical  with  that 
of  Ezra)  is  a  Western  Aramaic  dialect,  of  the  type  spoken  in 
and  about  Palestine.^  It  is  nearly  allied  to  the  Aramaic  of  the 
Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan;  and  still  more  so  to  the 
Aramaic  dialects  spoken  E.  and  SE.  of  Palestine,  in  Palmyra 
and  Nabataea,  and  known  from  inscriptions  dating  from  the 
3rd  cent.  B.C.  to  the  2nd  cent.  a.d.  In  some  respects  it  is  of  an 
earlier  type  than  the  Aramaic  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan;  and 
this  fact  was  formerly  supposed  to  be  a  ground  for  the  antiq- 
uity of  the  Book.  But  the  argument  is  not  conclusive.  For 
(i)  the  differences  are  not  considerable,^  and  largely  ortho- 

*  Noldeke,  Enc.  Brit.'  xxi.  647"  —  8°  —  Die  Sem.  Sprachen*  (1899),  35,  37 ; 
Enc.  B.  i.  282.  The  idea  that  the  Jews  forgot  their  Hebrew  in  Babylonia, 
and  spoke  in  "  Chaldee  "  when  they  returned  to  Palestine,  is  unfounded. 
Haggai,  Zechariah  and  other  post-exilic  writers  use  Hebrew :  Aramaic  is 
exceptional.  Hebrew  was  still  normally  spoken  c.  430  b.  c.  in  Jerusalem 
(Neh.  xiii.  24).  The  Hebrews,  after  their  Captivity,  acquired  gradually 
the  use  of  the  Aramaic  from  their  neighbours  in  and  about  Palestine.  See 
Noldeke.  ZDMG.  1871,  p.  129  f. ;  Kautzsch,  Gramm.  des  Bibl.  Aram.  §  6; 
Wright,  Compar.  Gramm.  of  the  Semitic  Languages  (1890),  p.  16:  "Now 
do  not  for  a  moment  suppose  that  the  Jews  lost  the  use  of  Hebrew  in  the 
Babylonian  captivity,  and  brought  back  with  then  into  Palestine  this  so- 
called  Chaldee.  The  Aramean  dialect,  which  gradually  got  the  upper  hand 
since  5-4  cent.  b.  c,  did  not  come  that  long  journey  across  the  Syrian 
desert;  it  was  there,  on  the  spot;  and  it  ended  by  taking  possession  of  the 
field,  side  by  side  with  the  kindred  dialect  of  the  Samaritans."  The  term 
"  Chaldee  "  for  the  Aramaic  of  either  the  Bible  or  the  Targums  is  a  mis- 
nomer, the  use  of  which  is  only  a  source  of  confusion. 

'They  are  carefully  collected  (on  the  basis,  largely,  of  M'Gill's  investi- 
gations) by  Dr.  Pusey,  Daniel,  ed  2,  pp.  45  ff.,  602  ff.  (an  interesting  lexi- 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  265 

graphical :  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan  did  not 
probably  receive  their  present  form  before  the  4th  cent.  a.d.  :^ 
and  we  are  not  in  a  position  to  afifirm  that  the  transition  from 
the  Aramaic  of  Dan.  and  Ezra  to  that  of  the  Targums  must 
have  required  8-9  centuries,  and  could  not  have  been  accomp- 
lished in  4-5;  (2)  recently  discovered  inscriptions  have  show^n 
that  many  of  the  forms  in  w^hich  it  differs  from  the  Aramaic 
of  the  Targums  w^ere  actually  in  use  in  neighbouring  countries 
down  to  the  ist  cent,  a.d.^  " 

Thus  the  final  n  (for  k)  in  verbs  K"S ,  and  in  nJX.  HD,  mn,  &c.,  occurs 
often  in  Nab.;  the  Hofal  {not  a  Hebraism:  Nold.  GGA.,  1884,  1015; 
Sachau;  Wright),  and  in  the  pass,  of  Pe'al  (Dan.  iii.  21  al.:  Bev.  pp.  37, 
72),  in  the  Palm.  Tariff  (Sachau,  ZMDG.  1883,  p.  564  f . ;  Wright,  Comp. 
Or.  p,  224  f. ;  otherwise  Cooke,  334)  ;  note  also  m'^;^  was  made  in  Cooke, 
No.  96*  (Nold,  Z.  f.  Ass.,  1890,  p.  290;  cf.  Dalman,  Gram,  des  Jud.-Pal. 
Aram.  202  (^253)  n.)  ;  the  K  in  the  impf.  of  verbs  j?"7  not  changed  to 
"• ,  repeatedly  in  Nab,  and  the  Tariff ;  «J8<"^d  (with  k  )  Dan.  iv.  16,  21 ;  Kt. 
Nab,  Cooke  8I^  82*,  94^  Eut.  27  (=  C/S.  ii.  224) '^  ^n^x  (Tg.  ri'K  )  Nab. 
Cooke  80'  81'  85"  86'-'  &c.;  n  (Tg.  n)  and  mi  (Tg.  y^  ),  both  regularly 
in  Palm.  Nab.;  lyijK  Dan.  iv.  13,  14;  Kt.,  Nab.  ibid.  79^  86'  "  '  &c.;  J  re- 
tained in  the  impf.  of  verbs  J''i3,  Nab.  ihid.  79^  80'  '  86''  87*  par,  79'  *  80' 
jn:';  the  3  pi.  pf.  fem.  in  v,  as  Dan.  vi.  5,  vii.  20;  Kt,  Nab  ibid.  80*  85*. 
For  the  suff.  of  3  ps.  pi.,  Nab.  has  Din-  (the  more  original  form),  Palm, 
pn-  ;  Dan.  agrees  here  with  Palm.,  Jer.  x.  11  with  Nab.;  Ezr.  has  both 
forms. 

It  is  remarkable  that — to  judge  from  the  uniform  usage  of  the  inscrip- 
tions at  present  known  from  Nineveh,  Babylon,  Tema,  Egypt,  and  even 
Cilicia  (coins  of  Mazaeus:  Cook  149  A  6,  cf.  on  A  5),  Cappadocia  (Lidz- 
barski,  Ephem.  Epigr.  i.  67,  323,  325),  and  Lycia   {CIS.  11.  i.  109, — with 


cal  point  is  that  the  vocabulary  agrees  sometimes  with  Syriac  against  the 
Targums).  But  when  all  are  told,  the  differences  are  far  outweighed  by 
the  resemblances;  so  that  relatively  they  cannot  be  termed  important  or 
considerable.  (The  amount  of  difference  is  much  exaggerated  in  the 
Speaker's  Comm.  p.  228.  The  statement  in  the  text  agrees  with  the  judg- 
ment of  Noldeke,  I.e.  p.  648*^;  Enc.  Bibl.  i.  283.) 

'Deutsch  in  Smith's  DB.  iii.  1644,  1652;  Volck  in  Herzog,^  xv.  z^f 
370;  Noldeke,  Enc.  Bibl.  i.  282. 

*See  (chiefly)  De  Vogue,  La  Syrie  Centrale  (1868),  with  inscriptions 
from  Palmyra,  mostly  from  1-3  cent.  a.  d.  (an  excellent  selection  in  Cooke, 
N.-Sem.  Inscr.  Nos.  110-146),  the  long  bilingual  Tariff  of  tolls  from  Pal- 
myra, of  A.  D.  137  {ibid.  No.  147)  ;  Euting,  Nabatdische  Inschriften  (1885), 
with  inscriptions  (largely  of  the  reign  of  r\n"in  =  'Apiras,  2  Cor.  xi.  32) 
from  B.  c.  9  to  A.  D.  75  (Cooke,  Nos.  78-102). 


266  THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL 

njr  for  nan) — in  the  Aramaic  used  officially  (cf.  p.  255;  Isa.  xxxvi.  11) 
in  the  Ass.  and  Persian  empires,  the  relative  was  '),'  not,  as  in  Dan. 
Ezr.,  and  Aram,  generally,  -i  (i).  m  thus  occurs  on  weights  and  con- 
tract-tablets from  Nineveh  (CIS.  11.  i.  2-5  [cf.  Cooke,  No.  60],  17,  20,  28, 
30,  31,  38,  39,  41,  42,  all  of  8-7  cent  b.  c.  ;  rf.  Cooke  150.  2)  ;  and  Babylon 
(ibid.  65,  B.  c.  504,  69-71,  B.  c.  418,  407,  408;  Qay,  in  OT.  and  Sem.  Studies 
in  memory  of  W.  R.  Harper,  1908,  ii.  299  flf.,  Nos.  2,  3,  5,  6,  8,  9,  11,  33 
from  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes,  b.  c.  464-424,  and  Nos.  23,  26,  28,  29,  33, 
35,  40  from  that  of  Darius  II..  b.  c.  424-404;  cf.  Cooke,  No.  67:  {i^)  pnx 
earth  for  (fc<);;'iH  (Dan.,  Ezr.)  also  occurs  regularly  in  the  same  in- 
scription, CIS.  1-4  [Cooke,  No.  66],  7,  11,  28,  35  from  Nineveh,  Clayj  Nos. 
5,  8,  II,  29,  40  from'  Babylon.  These  differences  ate  cogent  evidence  that 
the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  was  not  that  spoken  at  Babylon  in  Daniel's  age. 
Its  character  in  other  respects  apart  from  the  Persian  and  Greek  words 
which  it  contains,  cannot  be  said  to  lead  to  any  definite  result:  its  re- 
semblance with  the  Aramaic  of  Ezra  (probably  c.  400  b.  c.)  does  not 
prove  it  to  be  contemporary. 

Again  Dr.  Driver  says  on  page  508  of  the  same  work: 
"  The  verdict  of  the  language  of  Daniel  is  thus  clear.  The 
Persian  words  presuppose  a  period  after  the  Persian  empire 
had  been  well  established:  the  Greek  words  demand,  the  He- 
brew supports,  and  the  Aramaic  permits,  a  date  after  the  con- 
quest of  Palestine  by  Alexander  the  Great  (b.c.  332).  The 
Aramaic  is  also  that  which  was  spoken  in  or  near  Palestine. 
With  our  present  knowledge,  this  is  as  much  as  the  language 
authorizes  us  definitely  to  affirm."  ^ 

There  are  four  main  propositions  contained  in  these  cita- 
tions from  Dr.  Driver:  first,  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is 
Western ;  second,  that  it  is  all  but  identical  with  that  of  Ezra ; 
third,  that  it  is  nearly  allied  with  that  of  the  Targums  of 
Onkelos  and  Jonathan  and  to  that  of  the  Nabateans  and 
Palmyrenes ;  and  fourth,  that  it  was  "  spoken  in  and  about 

"So  in  the  Aram,  of  Zinjirli  (p.  255  n.)  :  Cooke,  Nos.  61-65. 

"  In  justice  to  Dr.  Driver  we  have  cited  the  above  statements  in  full.  In 
justice  to  the  writer  of  this  review  it  should  be  said  that  he  has  reserved 
for  a  future  article  the  words  in  the  second  citation,  "The  Hebrew  sup- 
ports " ;  and  that  the  word  "  thus  "of  the  first  sentence  in  so  far  as  it 
refers  to  Dr.  Driver's  discussion  of  the  Hebrew  of  Daniel  on  page  504-8 
has  not  been  considered  in  this  article.  Hebrew  is  brought  into  the  present 
treatment  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  constituent  part  of  the  Aramaic  portion  of 
Daniel. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  267 

Palestine ",  "  at  a  date  after  the  conquest  of  Palestine  by 
Alexander  the  Great  ". 

A.  Taking  these  propositions  up  in  order,  we  would  like  to 
ask  in  the  first  place,  in  view  of  the  inscriptions  that  have  been 
lately  published,  what  foundation  still  exists  for  designating 
the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  as  Western. 

The  only  reasons  given  by  Prof.  Theodor  Noldeke,  who  is 
generally  recognized  as  the  highest  authority  in  this  field,  for 
the  distinction  between  Eastern  and  Western  Aramaic  are 
that  the  third  person  masculine  of  the  Imperfect  of  the  Eastern 
type  has  the  preformative  n  (or  I),  whereas  the  Western  has 
y;  and  that  the  Eastern  has  ceased  to  attach  the  sense  of  the 
definite  article  to  the  ending  a  of  the  status  emphaticus.  ( See 
also  Margoliouth  in  Encyc.  Brit.  24:625).  It  is  undoubtedly 
true  and  must  be  readily  admitted  by  all  that  these  distinctions 
are  perfectly  clear  and  undeniable  in  all  works  which  have 
come  down  to  us  that  were  written  subsequent  to  the  year 
200  A.D.  But  all  the  documentary  evidence  that  we  possess 
shows  that  in  earlier  times,  down  at  least  to  73  A.D.,  the 
Eastern  Aramaic  did  not  differ  in  these  two  respects  from  the 
Western.  According  to  Noldeke  himself  the  evidence  of  the 
Babylonian  Talmud  does  not  go  back  beyond  the  period  from 
the  fourth  to  the  sixth  century  A.D.,  and  the  Mandean  writings 
belong  to  a  somewhat  later  period.''^  The  earliest  Syriac  writ- 
ing known  is  the  inscription  of  the  tomb  of  Manu  near  Serrin 
in  Mesopotamia,  which  was  discovered  and  published  by  H. 
Pognon,  the  erudite  French  consul,  in  his  work  called  In- 
scriptions Semitiques  de  la  Syrie,  de  la  Mesopotamie  et  de  la 
Region  de  Mossoul,  Paris,  190'j.  (Part  First,  page  15,  seq.) 
All  of  the  imperfects  of  the  third  person  in  this  inscription, 
and  there  are  six  of  them,  have  the  performative  y;  so  that  it 
is  certain  that  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  ist  century  A.D.,  the 
preformative  that  has  hitherto  been  looked  upon  as  at  all 
times  a  characteristic  of  the  Western  Aramaic  was  also  in  use 
in  the  Eastern.  Whether  the  other  preformative  was 
also    in    use    so   early    is    an    interesting   question,    but    one 

^  In  his  Mandean  Grammar,  page  22,  he  states  that  the  earliest  of  the 
Mandean  writings  that  are  known  was  composed  in  the  7th  century  A.  D. 


268  THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL 

which  cannot  be  answered  at  present,  since  no  further  data 
exist.  It  ought,  however,  certainly  to  be  admitted,  that  if  one 
writer  of  Eastern  Aramaic  could  and  did  use  the  preformative 
y  at  the  end  of  the  first  century  A.D.,  another  writer  of 
Eastern  Aramaic  might  have  used  it  at  the  end  of  the  sixth 
century  B.C.  That  is,  if  Manu,  son  of  Darnahai,  used  it  in 
73  A.D.,  Daniel  may  at  least  have  used  it  in  535  B.C.,  despite 
the  fact  that  from  the  second  century  A.D.  on,  other  forms 
are  found  to  have  been  used  universally  and  exclusively  in  all 
the  East-Aramaic  documents  that  have  been  discovered. 

But  the  inscription  of  Manu  is  not  the  only  evidence  that 
the  preformative  y  was  used  in  pre-Christian  times  in  Eastern 
Aramaic.  In  CIS43  we  find  the  form  ya'al  "  let  him  bring  ", 
and  also  vhT  in  CIS  106,  both  of  the  7th  century  B.C.  Fur- 
thermore, in  all  of  the  old  Aramaic  names  that  have  so  far 
been  published  in  the  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Semiticarum  and 
elsewhere,  which  contain  this  form  of  the  verb  as  a  component 
part,  the  preformative  is  inveriably  3;.  All  of  these  names 
are  indisputably  from  the  regions  occupied  by  the  Eastern 
Arameans.  These  names  are  Yirpeel,  (CIS77)  from  the 
eighth  or  seventh  century  B.C.;  Neboyirban  (CIS39)  from 
the  year  674  B.C.;  Yibcharel  (CIS47)  from  the  seventh 
century  B.C. 

Finally,  the  third  person  masculine  of  the  imperfects  in  the 
Aramaic  version  of  the  Behistun  Inscription  published  in 
Sept.  191 1  by  Prof.  Sachau  of  Berlin,  have  invariably  the 
preformative  3,'.  Of  course,  this  may  represent  a  West- 
Aramaic  rescension ;  but,  inasmuch  as  the  kings  of  Persia  had 
their  court  in  the  midst  of  the  East-Arameans  and  since  the 
Behistun  Inscription  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  regions 
occupied  by  the  East-Arameans,  it  is  fully  as  probable  that 
the  Aramaic  version  preserved  in  these  particular  papyri  rep- 
resents the  Eastern  Aramaic  of  that  time. 

Inasmuch,  then,  as  it  has  been  shown  that  the  preformative 
n  to  denote  the  third  person  masculine  of  the  imperfect  was 
never  employed  by  any  of  the  oldest  Arameans,  East  or  West, 
the  assertion  that  the  book  of  Daniel  (whether  it  was  written 
in  the  second  or  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  is  not  here  the 
question)  was  written  in  a  Western  dialect  and  the  consequent 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL  269 

implication  that  it  cannot  have  been  written  in  Babylon,  are 
both  shown  to  be  without  any  foundation  in  the  facts  as 
known. 

With  regard  to  the  use  of  Lomadh  as  a  preformative  of 
the  jussive  form  of  the  imperfect,  the  fact  that  it  has  been 
found  in  the  Hadad  inscription  from  the  8th  century  B.C. 
shows  that  it  may  well  have  been  used  in  a  document  coming 
from  the  6th  century  B.C.  The  fact  that  in  later  times  it  oc- 
curs only  in  the  Babylonian  Talmud  and  in  the  Mandean,^ 
both  written  in  or  about  Babylon,  shows  as  far  as  it  shows 
anything,  that  Daniel  was  written  in  the  East  rather  than  in 
the  West. 

With  regard  to  the  second  distinction  between  the  Western 
and  Eastern  Aramaic  (that  the  former  employs  the  ending 
a  to  denote  the  definite  or  emphatic  state,  whereas  the  latter 
has  come  to  use  the  emphatic  in  the  same  sense  as  the  abso- 
lute), a  study  of  the  earlier  East- Aramaic  inscriptions  would 
indicate  that  in  the  usage  of  the  period  from  800  B.C.  to  400 
B.C.  the  distinction  between  the  two  states  was  just  as  closely 
preserved  in  the  Eastern  as  in  the  Western  Aramaic.  Thus 
in  the  Aramaic  inscriptions  from  the  8th  to  the  6th  century 
B.C.  the  ending  a  to  represent  the  emphatic  state  is  employed 
in  the  following  phrases: 

*'  of  the  land  ",  CIS  Nos.  i,  2,  3,  4,  7. 

"  sale  of  the  handmaid  Hambusu  ",  id.  19. 

"  sale  of  the  field  ",  id.  24,  27,  53. 

"  book  of  the  silver  ",  id.  30. 

"  son  of  the  king  ",  id.  38,  39. 

"  the  barley  ",  id.  42. 

"the  silver",  id.  43,  70,  71,  108. 

"  the  scribe  ",  id.  46,  84. 

"  the  pledge  ",  id.  65. 

"  the  house  ",  id.  65. 

"  the  eunuch  ",  id.  75. 

"  the  guards  ",  id.  108. 

'  Dalman  says  on  p.  264  of  his  Grammar,  that  in  Onkelos  and  the  Tar- 
gum  of  Jonathan  the  form  never  is  found  except  in  additions  (abgesehen 
von  Zusatzen)  to  the  text. 


270 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 


So  in  Clay's  Aramaic  Indorsements,  some  of  which  reach  as 
late  as  400  B.C.,  we  find  the  same  usage,  viz.,  "  the  rent  of 
the  land".  No.  5,  8,  11,  cf.  21;  "document  concerning  the 
house  ",  17;  "  Darius  the  king  ",  22;  "  document  of  the  lands 
of  the  Carpenter  ",  29. 

When  it  is  remembered  that  all  the  inscriptions  here  cited 
are  from  the  provenience  of  the  Eastern  Aramaic,  that  they 
cover  the  period  from  the  8th  century  B.C.  to  the  5th  Century 
B.C.  inclusive,  and  that  in  every  one  of  the  cases  given  in  the 
CIS  and  in  Clay's  Indorsements  the  emphatic  state  is  used  in 
a  definite  and  proper  sense,  it  will  be  evident  that  in  the  6th 
century  B.C.,  a  writer  composing  a  work  at  Babylon  might 
have  employed  the  emphatic  state  in  its  definite  sense.  For 
there  is  no  proof  that  in  the  6th  century  B.C.,  any  dialect  of 
the  Aramaic  did  not  use  the  emphatic  state  to  denote  what  the 
Hebrew  denoted  by  the  definite  article.  The  Eastern  as  well 
as  the  Western  Aramaic  documents  alike  employ  the  emphatic 
state,  ending  in  a,  and  they  both  alike  employ  it  correctly  and 
in  the  same  sense. 

There  is  therefore  no  evidence  that  in  the  6th  century  B.C., 
either  of  these  two  features,  which  at  a  later  time  make 
the  distinction  between  the  Eastern  and  Western  Aramaic, 
was  in  existence;  and  hence  it  is  wrong  to  say  that  the  book 
of  Daniel  was  written  in  Western  Aramaic  as  distinguished 
from  Eastern. 

B.  The  second  statement  of  Dr.  Driver  to  the  effect  that 
the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is  all  but  identical  with  that  of  Ezra 
may  be  accepted  as  in  most  respects  correct.  This  is  what  we 
might  have  expected,  if  Daniel  was  written  in  the  6th  and 
Ezra  in  the  5th  century  B.C.  But  since  they  are  almost  iden- 
tical, it  would  follow  that  if  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  were  late, 
the  Aramaic  of  Ezra  would  be  late  also.  That  is,  this  would 
follow  if  Dr.  Driver's  argument  be  correct  and  if  it  were  true 
that  a  proved  similarity  between  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  and 
that  of  the  Nabateans,  Palmyrenes,  and  the  Targums,  would 
prove  the  late  date  of  Daniel.  By  parity  of  reasoning,  if 
Daniel  be  late  because  its  language  is  like  that  of  the  Naba- 
teans, Palmyrenes,  and  the  Targums;  then  it  is  early  because 
it  is  like  that  of  Ezra,  or  Ezra  is  late  because  its  language  is 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  271 

like  that  of  Daniel.  According  to  Dr.  Driver's  own  argu- 
ment, either  Daniel  and  Ezra  are  both  early  or  both  late.  In 
the  sequel  we  shall  endeavor  to  show  that  the  language  of 
Daniel  is  not  like  that  of  either  the  Nabateans,  the  Palmyrenes, 
or  the  Talmuds,  and  that  the  language  of  Daniel  is  early  rather 
than  late. 

C.  In  the  third  place,  Dr.  Driver  says,  that  the  Aramaic  of 
Daniel  is  "nearly  allied  to  the  Aramaic  of  the  Targums  of 
Onkelos  and  Jonathan;  and  still  more  so  to  the  Aramaic  dia- 
lects spoken  East  and  Southeast  of  Palestine,  in  Palmyra  and 
Nabataea,  and  known  from  inscriptions  dating  from  the  3rd 
century  B.C.  to  the  2nd  century  A.D." 

The  obvious  intention  of  this  statement  is  to  leave  the  im- 
pression on  the  mind  of  the  reader  that  the  book  of  Daniel  is 
late,  because  the  Aramaic  dialect  in  which  a  part  of  it  is 
written  resembles  the  Aramaic  contained  in  writings  that  are 
known  to  have  been  composed  long  after  the  6th  century  B.C. 
We  judge  that  it  was  a  slip  of  the  pen  that  caused  Dr.  Driver 
to  say  that  the  Palmyrene  and  Nabatean  inscriptions  are  dated 
from  the  3rd  century  B.C.  to  the  2nd  century  A.D.  It  would 
be  more  exact  to  say  that  the  Nabatean  inscriptions  whose 
date  is  known  extend  from  70  B.C.  to  95  A.D.  and  the  Palmy- 
rene from  9  B.C.  to  271  A.D.  This  correction  of  Dr.  Driver's 
statement  merely  brings  it  into  harmony  with  the  generally 
accepted  view,  that  there  are  no  Aramaic  inscriptions  of  any 
kind  from  what  is  called  the  Greek  period,  except  the  bilin- 
gual proper  name  from  Tello.  But  passing  by  this  statement 
as  a  mere  inadvertence,  we  shall  address  ourselves  to  the  main 
issue,  stating  the  question  to  be  considered  as  follows :  Is  it 
true  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is  nearly  allied  to  that  of  the 
Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan  and  to  that  of  the  Palmy- 
rene and  Nabatean  inscriptions? 

Before  attempting  to  answer  this  question,  it  may  be  well 
to  define  what  we  mean  by  "  nearly  allied  ".  All  dialects  of 
a  given  language  are  allied  and  always  more  closely  allied  to 
one  another  than  they  are  to  the  dialects  of  any  other  lan- 
guage. When  it  is  said  that  one  dialect  of  a  language  is 
nearly  allied  to  one  or  more  other  dialects,  it  means  that  it 
resembles  it  or  them  more  closely  than  it  resembles  certain 


272 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 


Others.  In  other  words,  it  is  a  comparative  statement.  In 
the  particular  case  before  us,  it  can  only  mean  that  the  Ara- 
maic of  Daniel  is  more  nearly  allied  to  those  dialects  mentioned 
than  it  is  to  the  Northern  Syriac  of  the  Sendshirli  inscrip- 
tions, or  to  the  Egyptian  Aramaic,  or  to  the  Mandean  and 
Syriac.  And  the  purpose  of  the  statement  is,  that,  if  it  were 
true,  it  would  make  a  presumption,  almost  equivalent  to  a 
demonstration,  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  was  written  in  or 
about  Palestine  and  at  a  date  not  far  removed  from  that  at 
which  the  documents  which  it  resembles  were  written.. 

If  it  can  be  shown  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  resembles 
the  Aramaic  from  the  8th  to  the  5th  century  B.C.  as  much  as 
it  resembles  that  of  these  later  documents,  no  conclusion  as  to 
the  date  of  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  could  be  drawn  from  its 
resemblances  to  these  other  Aramaic  dialects.  If  it  can  be 
shown  that  it  more  closely  resembles  the  language  of  the 
ancient  documents  than  it  does  that  of  the  later,  there  would 
be  a  strong  presumption  for  an  early  date  for  the  Aramaic  of 
Daniel.    And  vice  versa. 

But,  while  paying  due  attention  to  the  resemblances  be- 
tween the  dialects,  we  must  not  fail  to  keep  in  mind,  that 
after  all  it  is  the  differences,  between  the  dialects  that  con- 
stitute their  essential  characteristics.  The  Aramaic  of  Daniel, 
for  example,  is  not  a  dialect  because  of  those  parts  which  are 
common  to  it  with  other  dialects,  but  because  of  its  differentia. 
And  the  question  to  be  asked  with  regard  to  these  differentia 
in  determining  the  date  and  provenience  of  a  dialect  is :  At 
what  time  and  place  would  a  dialect  possessing  them  have  been 
produced?  If  the  dialect  is  preserved  in  a  single  work,  we 
may  further  ask,  whether  the  personality,  education,  and  cir- 
cumstances, of  the  presumptive  author  might  have  influenced 
him  in  certain  pecularities  of  language,  making  them  personal 
rather  than  dialectic. 

Furthermore,  in  discussing  the  question  of  the  date  and 
provenience  of  a  work,  and  the  pecularities  and  alliances  of  a 
dialect,  it  is  proper  to  consider  not  merely  the  grammar  of 
each  but  also  the  vocabulary.  And  again,  in  respect  to  the 
vocabulary,  it  is  not  so  much  to  the  use  of  different  words 
that  are  possibly  of  pure  Aramaic  origin  or  use,  as  to  the 


THE   ARAMAIC   OF   DANIEL  273 

admixture  of  foreign  vocables,  that  attention  must  be  di- 
rected, inasmuch  as  almost  every  work,  especially  if  it  be  on 
a  new  subject,  will  contain  words  not  found  elsewhere  in  the 
written  language.  Foreign  terms,  however,  almost  infallibly 
indicate  the  location  and  time  that  the  work  was  written, 
especially  in  their  earliest  occurrence,  or  if  they  be  found 
nowhere  else. 

With  these  preliminary  remarks,  let  us  proceed  to  a  discus- 
sion of  the  relations  of  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  to  that  of  the 
other  dialects,  first  as  to  its  grammar  and  secondly  as  to  its 
vocabulary.  We  shall  study  these  relations  under  the  head- 
ings of  signs  and  sounds,  forms  and  inflections,  syntax  and 
vocabulary. 

I.  Signs  and  Sounds 

The  dialects  agree  in  general  in  the  use  they  make  of  the 
signs  b,  g,  h,  t,  k,  I,  p,  and  r.  That  is,  where  we  find  6  or  ^  in 
one  dialect  we  may  expect  to  find  them  in  all,  since  they 
always  denote  the  same  sound.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the 
use  of  Aleph  and  h  varies  frequently  in  the  different  dialects 
or  even  in  the  same  dialect ;  as  does  also  that  oi  d  and  z;  w,  y 
and  Aleph;  m  and  n;  Semkath  and  Sin;  Sodhe,  *Ayin,  and 
Qoph;  and  of  Shin  and  Tau.  Sometimes  these  differences  are 
simply  variant  ways  of  spelling,  no  difference  in  sound  being 
presupposed.  At  other  times,  however,  a  variation  in  the 
sound  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the  variation  of  the  sign. 

I.  Use  of  Aleph.  Giving  our  attention  first  to  the  letter 
Aleph,  we  shall  take  as  an  example  of  the  variation  in  the  use 
of  it  the  word  «nD  "  lord  ".  The  fact  that  this  word  re- 
tains the  Aleph  in  the  Nabatean,  just  as  we  find  it  in  the 
Kethiv  of  Dan.  iv.  16,  21,  is  used  by  Dr.  Driver  as  evidence 
that  Daniel  may  have  been  late  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
Aramaic  of  the  Targums  has  dropped  the  Aleph.  The  evi- 
dence with  regard  to  the  writing  of  t<1D  is  as  follows : 

a.  In  the  Sendshirli  inscriptions  we  find  it  in  the  const, 
sing.  «"l!3  B.  R.  3,  n[«]nD  Pan.  11,  ''«nD  Pan.  19,  B.  R.  5,  6. 

b.  In  the  Egypto-Aramaic,  N*1D  in  Sach.  15. 15.6,  35.37.2; 
50a.  2,  61R.  9  in  the  absolute;  2.15  in  the  construct;    ''^na 


274  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

7.8,    II.    17,    12.2    (?),    I3.I2V.2,    36.39R.I,   43-2IO,   60.7.2; 
•SjKno  49.2   and   CISi44A.i,2;    HKID    49.2   and   CIS145AF; 

jino  I.I,  2.18,  23,  3V.17,  22,  4.5.7, 12, 12,  5. 1,  5;  •'«nD  II. I, 

I2.I,    12;    Tisna    13.12V.I.2.3.      Without    Aleph,    DrT'ia    ? 
15,15.6;  in  SC  possibly  ^D  M.a.2(?)  and  pa  P.2. 

c.  In  Daniel  ^'^D  in  the  construct  ii.  47,  v.  23;  •»«^D  iv.  16, 
21. 

d.  In  Ezra,  no  form  found. 

e.  In  Nabatean,  «nD  in  the  construct  CIS235A2 ;  WW1D 
Pet.  i.  3.  CIS  1 99.8,  201.4. 

f.  In  Palmyrene,  W'nD  in  the  construct,  Vog.73.1,  Tay.i; 
pnnD    Vog.28.4,    ]^'D     Vog.23.2,  25.3;     TniD    Vog.     103.6; 

jinniD  Vog.29.4(?) 

g.  In  all  the  Targums,  we  have  *li3,  in  the  construct  "'ID 
but  never  «*ia  • 

h.  In  Syriac,  Mandean,  and  Samaritan,  the  Aleph  is  always 
dropped. 

From  the  above  examples  it  will  be  seen  that  while  a  late 
writer  of  Aramaic  might  have  written  the  word  as  Daniel 
does,  the  almost  universal  usage  is  against  it.  The  Nabateans 
and  Palmyrenes  in  the  central  desert  still  employed  it,  but  to 
the  east,  north  and  west  of  them  it  was  dropped  by  all.  Among 
the  older  writings,  however,  it  was  almost  as  universally  em- 
ployed, but  one  certain  example  of  its  omission  being  known. 

2.  Use  of  Wau.  Every  student  of  ancient  Aramaic  texts 
knows  that  variations  in  the  use  of  Wau  and  Yodh  are  no 
sure  indications  of  the  age  of  a  document.  In  inscriptions 
from  the  same  age  and  dialect,  we  frequently  find  the  same 
word  written  both  with  and  without  one  or  the  other  of  these 
letters.  For  example,  take  in  Palmyrene  the  word  "  to  save  ". 
It  is  written  ^Ptt^  in  Cooke  No.  loi,  from  A.D.  45,  and 
STtfi^  in  another  document  from  96  A.D.  {id.  note).  Take 
also  «»•»  (Sachau  papyri  64.2)  instead  of  the  usual  «D'i''  {id, 
2.20;  3V.19;  20.K.7.1;  33.33.4;  451;  63.1b.2). 

Further,  it  must  be  kept  in  mind  in  discussing  Wau  and 
Yodh,  that  thousands  of  variations  in  the  use  of  them  are  to 
be  found  in  the  Hebrew  MSS.  of  the  Old  Testament.  We 
should  remember  also  that  the  vowel  signs  now  in  the  Hebrew 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  275 

and  Aramaic  texts  of  the  Bible  do  not  antedate  the  6th  century 
A.D. 

Bearing  these  facts  in  mind  we  shall  enter  upon  a  discus- 
sion of  Dr.  Driver's  statement  on  page  504  of  LOT,  that  we 
have  the  same  manner  of  writing  ^1Ji<  in  the  Kethiv  of 
Daniel  iv.  13,  14  and  in  the  Nabatean  (Cooke  79.7,  86,3,5,6, 
etc.).  This  remark  must  refer  to  the  spelling,  since  the  use 
of  the  word  in  the  sense  of  "  one  "  is  found  in  Palmyrene 
(Cooke  p.  311)  and  we  may  add,  in  SC,  K8,  10,  and  in  Sach. 
36.39  and  46.14;  but  in  Daniel  it  means  "men,  mankind, 
Menschheit  "  just  as  in  Sach.  Pap.  46.6  and  48.1.4.  The 
papyri  distinguished  between  a^i«  and  «tt^i«  using  the 
former  for  "  one  "  and  the  latter  for  "  mankind  ",  just  as 
Daniel  does,  for  in  iv.  13,  14  the  latter  writes  ^<^iJ^5  (or  i^^^^ 
if  we  follow  the  Qre),  while  the  Nabatean  has  ^13J<.  In 
other  words,  the  meaning  of  the  form  used  in  Nabatean 
differs  from  that  used  in  Daniel  in  the  verses  cited.  Still,  as 
Daniel  does  elsewhere  use  ^^i<  in  the  sense  of  "  one  ",  we 
may  waive  this  point. 

It  has  been  customary  to  call  these  two  cases  Hebraisms,  as 
Marti  did  in  the  first  edition  of  his  Aramaic  Grammar.  This 
would  seem  probably  correct,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  Daniel 
eight  times  elsewhere  in  the  Aramaic  portions  spells  the  word 
«t2^Ji<  and  that  the  word  is  spelled  with  the  o  42  times  in 
the  Hebrew  portion  of  the  Bible.  The  Massoretes  have  con- 
sidered the  0  to  be  a  mistake  in  the  text  of  iv.  13,  14  and  have 
corrected  it  by  changing  the  vowel  from  0  to  a  in  harmony  with 
the  usual  spelling  elsewhere  in  Daniel.  In  view  of  the  fact 
that  the  Hebrew  in  nearly  all  cases  has  changed  an  a  to  o,  and 
especially  in  view  of  the  further  fact  that  in  the  West  Syriac 
an  East  Syriac  a  is  pronounced  as  0,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  a 
writer  or  copyist  might  vary  in  the  spelling  of  a  word  con- 
taining a  sound  that  shifted  from  a  to  o.  Especially  would 
this  be  true  of  a  Hebrew  writing  Aramaic.  This  variation  of 
sound  may  account  also  for  the  fact  that  the  Palmyrene  has 
tS^iS  while  the  Nabatean  has  ^1i«  .  For  ourselves,  we 
prefer  to  consider  it  an  error  of  a  Hebrew  scribe,  just  as  the 
Massoretes  have  done.     But  at  any  rate,  that  the  writer  of 


276  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

Daniel  should  have  spelt  the  word  twice  with  an  a  as  against 
eighteen  times  with  an  6  does  not  show  a  very  close  relation  be- 
tween him  and  the  Nabatean  scribes  who  wrote  the  inscrip- 
tions in  that  language  in  the  first  century  A.D. ;  for  they 
always  write  it  with  an  o. 

3.  Use  of  He.  Dr.  Driver  says  that  Daniel  may  have 
been  late,  because  a  final  He  in  verbs  Lomadh  Aleph  occurs 
often  in  Nabatean,  although  the  Targums  have  uniformly  em- 
ployed Aleph.  This  statement  is  ambiguous.  No  yerb  that 
had  originally  an  Aleph  as  its  third  radical  has  been  found 
either  in  Nabatean,  or  Palmyrene.  What  Dr.  Driver  means 
us  to  understand  is,  that  verbs  whose  third  radical  was  Wau 
or  Yodh  have  had  this  third  radical  elided  and  that  its  place 
is  taken  by  the  vowel  letter  He,  instead  of  by  Aleph  as  in  the 
Targums.  How  a  verb  whose  third  radical  was  Aleph  could 
have  been  written  in  Nabatean  or  Palmyrene,  we  do  not 
know,  because  no  such  verb  has  yet  been  found.  The  evi- 
dence for  the  use  of  the  final  He,  or  Aleph,  in  the  verbs 
whose  third  radical  was  originally  Wau,  Yodh,  or  Aleph,  is 
as  follows: 

a.  The  Syriac,  Mandean,  and  the  Aramaic  of  the  Targums 
never  use  He. 

b.  The  early  inscriptions  always  use  He  for  verbs  whose 
third  radical  was  Wau  or  Yodh  and  Aleph  for  those  whose 
third  radical  was  Aleph. 

c.  The  Nabatean  and  Palmyrene  and  the  book  of  Ezra 
have  no  verbs  whose  third  radical  was  originally  Aleph.  In 
writing  those  which  had  originally  Wau  or  Yodh,  they  some- 
times employ  He,  sometimes  Aleph. 

d.  Samaritan  commonly  employs  Aleph  for  verbs  that  origi- 
nally had  Aleph  and  He  for  those  that  had  Wau  and  Yodh, 
though  for  the  latter  Wau  and  Yodh  are  sometimes  employed, 
perhaps  in  imitation  of  the  Arabic  method  of  writing  them. 

e.  The  text  of  Daniel  presents  a  method  of  writing  differ- 
ent from  that  found  elsewhere. 

(i)  The  originally  Lomadh  Aleph  verb  i<^i  is  written 
with  an  Aleph. 

(2)   The  verb  NtDD  which  the  Sachau  papyri  treat  as  an 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  277 

originally    Lomadh    Aleph    verb,    Daniel    writes    t<tDD    once 
and  twice,  HIOD  . 

(3)  Nity  is  written  with  an  Aleph,  (once  only).  Possi- 
bly this  verb  is  found  in  the  «nty-r:}j;  of  CIS696.3. 

(4)  n:D,  nT\  and  nn«  are  written  with  a  He,  though  Ezra 
writes  the  latter  with  an  Aleph. 

(5)  «Tn  and  SJ^D  are  written  once  each  with  Aleph 
and  once  each  with  He.  Marti's  text  reads  HTn  both  times 
and  i<V^  both  times,  mn  is  written  seven  times  and  Win  four 
times  without  variants,  and  once  we  find  each  one  in  the 
Kethiv  and  the  other  in  the  Qre.  Since  the  latter  two  verbs 
are  always  written  with  a  He  in  Egypto-Aramaic  and  «10D 
with  an  Aleph,  it  would  require  merely  the  harmonizing  of 
these  variant  readings  of  Daniel  to  bring  his  text  into  complete 
accord  with  the  spellings  of  the  Aramaic  Egyptian  documents 
of  the  5th  century  B.C.  The  same  may  be  said  of  n3><, 
HD,  and  rnn  which  is  Egypto-Aramaic  and  always  spelled 
with  a  He. 

4.  Use  of  Lomadh.  a.  In  Daniel.  In  the  verb  p^D  the  h 
is  assimilated  backwards  whenever  the  D  comes  at  the  end 
of  the  syllable;  e.  g.,  a.  "^pDH  iii.  22,  pDH  vi.  24. 

Instead  of  the  doubling  of  the  D,  the  Inf.  Hoph.  inserts  a 
Nun  before  it.  e.  g.    npDJn  vi.  24.     But  p^^Hi?  iii.  25,  iv.  34. 

b.  In  Ezra,  the  b  of  '!|^!l  is  dropped,  e.  g.,  '^n'»  v.  5,  vii.  13, 
•^na^  vii.  13. 

c.  In  N.  Syr.  the  verbs  containing  these  peculiarities  have 
not  been  found. 

d.  In  Egyptian  Aramaic,  we  have  "nnri  Sak.  B.4  C6 
(=:CISi45  B4C6)  and  SCG  25,  28;  "^inx  SC.D22;  unp 
Sach.  63.5.2,  but  1t^n»  42.9;  p^n*'  Sach.  29.19. 

e.  In  Nabatean  the  verbs  containing  these  peculiarities  have 
not  yet  been  found. 

f.  In  Palmyrene  we  find  IpDN  T.  1.5,  pDlD  T.  1.8;  pD« 
Vog.  74.    We  find  in  Pal.  also  «n^3  Sem.  vi.  4  for  BAX'^TB^D. 

g.  In  Onkelos  h  is  (i)  dropped  in  the  Imv.  Peal  of  p^D 
and  in  the  Impf.  and  Inf.  Peal  of  ?^n  (Dalm.  66.1,  70.9.), 
e.  g.  IpD  N.  xiii.  17,  pD  G.  xxxv.  i,  "'pD  N.  xxi.  18,  '^H'' 
D.  XX.  6,  Jl^n*'    E.  xxxii.  i,   "^lilD^  D.  xxix.  17. 


278  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

(2)  Assimilated  in  pD  N.  xiii.31,  pD«  E.  xxxii.  38, 
•IpDK  G.  viii.  20. 

h.  In  Sam.  h  is  dropped  in  the  Imv.  Peal  of  '^^n  and 
pho  e.  g.,  "^nK  G.  xxviii.  2,  IpID  N.  xxxiii.  17,  pD  G. 
XXXV.  i;  but  ''p^D  N.  xxi.  18.  It  is  assimilated  in  pD«G.  viii. 
20,  pDD  E.  xix.  23. 

i.  In  Syriac  (see  Noldeke  §  §  29  and  183  (5))  the  first  ^ 
is  not  pronounced  in  fc^^^DD  and  W^^tao]  and  falls  away  in 
some  forms  of  f?TK  and  in  the  Peal  and  Aphel  of  pbu* 

j.  In  Mandean  we  have  p«D''J,  p«Dj;,  pi^CD,  p''DW,  pD«D, 
p«D,  D-'D* 

From  the  above  collection  of  facts  as  to  the  manner  of  writ- 
ing Lomadh  we  find  that  it  is  assimilated  backwards  in  all  the 
forms  of  Peal  and  Aphel  perfect  and  imperfect  which  have  a 
preformative.  Unfortunately,  such  forms  are  found  only  in 
Daniel,  Onkelos,  Syriac,  Mandean  and  Samaritan.  Daniel  is 
peculiar  in  inserting  a  dissimilative  Nun  in  the  infinitive  of  the 
causative  active  stem  of  this  verb. 

Further,  Daniel  agrees  with  the  Egypto-Aramaic  in  re- 
taining the  Lomadh  in  forms  of  '^hn  in  which  the  preforma- 
tive is  Mem. 

5.  Use  of  d  and  z.  The  primitive  Semitic  seems  to  have 
had  three  sounds  corresponding  to  our  d,  dh,  and  z.  From 
whatever  source  they  adopted  their  alphabet  there  seem  to 
have  been  but  two  signs  to  express  the  three  sounds.  One  of 
these  signs  was  used  exclusively  to  denote  d  and  another  to 
denote  z.  There  being  no  sign  for  the  third  sound,  three 
methods  were  followed.  The  Arabs  invented  a  third  sign. 
Hebrew,  Ethiopic  and  Babylonian  expressed  dh  prevailingly 
by  the  z  sign  but  sometimes  by  the  d  sign.  The  old  Aramean 
inscriptions  of  Northern  Syria  and  of  Assyria  from  the  9th 
to  the  7th  century  inclusive  always  use  z.  The  Palmyrene, 
the  Syriac  and  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan  always 
use  d.  The  Aramaic  papyri  use  either  with  almost  equal  fre- 
quency. The  Samaritan  Targum  and  the  Mandean  dialect 
also,  vary  in  their  use  even  in  writing  the  same  words.  The 
earliest  Nabatean  inscription,  dating  from  70  B.C.  (CIS 
I  349)  always  uses  z,  but  all  the  other  inscriptions  regularly 
use  d.     In  the  Assyrian  transliterations  of  Aramean  names 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  279 

as  early  as  855  B.C.,  Hadadezer  is  rendered  by  Dad-idri. 
Daniel  and  Ezra  always  use  d  for  this  sound  except  in  Ezra's 
writing  of  ^2U  where  Daniel  has  ^^13 ♦ 

This  variety  of  sign  to  express  the  same  original  sound 
would  seem  to  confirm  the  opinion  that  we  have  here  to  deal 
not  with  a  linguistic  or  dialectic  change  of  sound  but  with 
the  endeavor  to  compel  two  signs  to  serve  for  three  sounds. 
The  Arabic  denotes  it  by  putting  a  dot  over  the  ordinary 
sign  for  d.  The  other  dialects  avail  themselves  of  the  usual 
sign  for  d  or  z,  just  as  we  English  avail  ourselves  of  the 
sigh  th  in  thin  and  that.  The  oldest  Arameans  consistently 
used  B.  The  book  of  Daniel,  if  written  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  6th  century  B.C.,  would  be  the  first  known  document  to 
use  the  sign  d  for  dh.  Being  an  educated  man  the  author 
used  it  consistently  and  exclusively.  After  his  time,  the 
writers  in  Egypt  and  the  Samaritans  and  Nabateans  wavered 
in  their  usage;  but  the  Targums  and  those  books  whose  writ- 
ers were  under  the  influence  of  Daniel  came  to  use  d  exclus- 
ively. The  Arabs  not  being  under  this  influence  pursued  their 
own  way  of  expressing  dh.  In  studying  this  difficult  question 
we  must  keep  two  matters  in  mind ;  first,  that  Daniel  had  stud- 
ied both  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  and  in  each  of  these  dh  was 
written  by  means  of  both  d  and  z;  and  secondly,  that  somebody 
must  have  started  this  spelling  reform  and  Daniel's  position 
would  have  enabled  him  to  do  it. 

6.  Use  of  Mem  and  Nun.  These  two  letters  vary  in  the 
different  languages  and  dialects  of  the  Semitic  family  in  the 
absolute  masc.  plural  of  the  noun  and  in  the  second  and  third 
personal  pronouns.  The  latter  only  enters  into  the  discussion 
of  Daniel  because  he  always  uses  the  forms  kon  and  hon 
where  some  other  Aramaic  dialects  use  kum  and  hum,  or  hon 
and  kon.  The  question  is :  Can  the  book  of  Daniel  have  been 
written  in  the  6th  century  B.C.  and  yet  have  used  n  instead  of 
m  in  these  cases  ?    We  think  it  can. 

(i)  Because  all  Aramaic  documents  of  any  age  written  in 
the  East  have  used  n  instead  of  m.  This  is  true  of  everything 
in  Syriac,  Mandean,  and  the  Talmud  as  well  as  of  Palmyrene. 

(2)  It  is  true  of  all  documents  in  Assyrian  and  Babylonian. 


28o  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

(3)  Ezra,  whose  composition  Dr.  Driver  puts  at  400  B.C., 
uses  n  as  well  as  m. 

(4)  The  Samaritans  used  m  as  well  as  n. 

(5)  While  it  may  be  said,  that  the  Sendshirli  and  other 
early  Western  documents  used  m  in  imitation  of  the  Hebrews 
and  Phenicians,  or  in  the  case  of  the  Nabateans,  of  the  Arabs ; 
so  it  may  be  said,  that  the  eastern  dialects  used  n  in  imitation 
of  the  Assyrio-Babylonians.  Ezra  being  composed  largely  of 
letters  between  the  eastern  Arameans  and  the  western  uses 
both.  ^  . 

(6)  The  variations  in  the  transliteration  of  proper  names 
in  the  use  of  m  for  n  and  n  for  m,  and  between  mimmation 
and  nunnation  present  a  problem  that  cannot  yet  be  solved 
and  that  should  make  us  hesitate  to  dogmatize  on  the  reasons 
for  the  variations  in  the  different  dialects  and  languages  in 
the  use  of  these  letters. 

(7)  The  earliest  document  outside  the  Scriptures  and  the 
Assyrio-Babylonian  to  make  use  of  n  is  the  Palmyrene  inscrip- 
tion of  21  A.D.  The  earliest  Syriac  is  from  73  A.D.  The 
latest  Nabatean  inscription  to  use  these  suffixes  uses  the  form 
with  m.  It  is  dated  according  to  Cooke  (North  Semitic  In- 
scriptions p.  252)  in  65  A.D.  If  the  writer  of  Daniel  could 
have  used  the  n  in  165  B.C.  in  Palestine,  as  his  critics  would 
have  us  believe,  although  those  "  in  and  about  Palestine  "  were 
using  m,  why  may  he  not  have  used  n  in  Babylon  in  535  B.C. 
where  all  in  and  about  Babylon  were  using  n? 

7.  Further  use  of  Nun.    The  following  uses  of  Nun  are 
to  be  noted. 

(i)  It  is  dropped  : 

a.  In  Daniel,  ^DIS  iii.  26. 

b.  In  Ezra,  «tt^  v.  15. 

c.  In  No.  Syr",  '•jn  CIS.i5o«. 

d.  In  Eg.  Ar.,  nn,  1t3,  KtS^.     See  Sach.  Pap. 

e.  Nabatean,  no  form  occurs. 

f .  Palmyrene,  no  form  occurs. 

g.  In  Onkelos,  pis,  mn.     See  Dalman  p.  293. 

h.  In  Syriac,  pIB,  mn,  ntS,  and  many  others.     See  Nol- 
deke  pp.  22,  115. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL  281 

i.  In  Mandean,  only  in  ^i<D,  ^""S,  niH  and  p«B.     Noldeke 

p.  240. 
j.  In  Sam.,  ^D,  nnX-     See  Petermann  pp.  8  and  34. 

(2)  It  is  assimilated : 

a.  In  Daniel,  ^fii  iii.  6,  10,  11,  p^sn  iii.  5,  15,  ^XD  vi.  28, 

n^^niii.  29,  nn^^sn   vi.  15,  nj:n"'  iv.  14,  22,  29, 
jirip  ii.  6,  48,  -^n^riD  v.  17. 

b.  In  Ezra  ^£5«»  vii.  20,  nnn  vi.  5,  rin«  V.  15,  I'Tinni^  vi.  I. 

c.  In  N.  S.  Jfi"'  Hadad  23  ;  ijn''  Hadad  4  ;  sti>j<  Zakiri.  11 ; 

inD''  Ner  i.  9. 

d.  InEg.  Ar.    jn''    CIS149  BC12 ;    p^nH  CIS138   B2; 

pnn''  CIS145  B6;  «ini::  Sach.  Pap.  vi.  2,  7,  II,  12. 

e.  In  Nabatean  [«n]ntOD  Litt.  i.  3;  nnn«  CIS,  158*. 

f.  In  Pal.   pBS  Tiib43,    pS«»   Tii  C12;   DD«  Vog.  74, 

pDD  Ti8,  jn''  Tii  a5,  b20,  pnn''lD  Eph.  11  278^  nn« 
/V.  298^ 

g.  In   Onkelos   the  Nun   is  almost  always   assimilated, 

except  when  before  He  or  Ayin.  Dal.  p.  loi. 

h.  In  Syr.  "  almost  always '',  Nold.  §  28,  except  before  He. 

i.  In  Mandean  "often".     p^s«,  f^tfiii,  «ri"'tt^  ''year  ",  Nol- 
deke §§  56,  178. 

j.  In  Sam.  nnj,  ^D"*.     See  Petermann  pp.  8  and  34. 

(3)  It  is  inserted: 

a.  In  Daniel,  ^i:r\  iv.  22,  23,  29,  30 ;  jnj«  ii.  9 ;  pP'Ti'' 

iv.  14;  yi:^  ii.  21,  iv.  31,  33,  V.  12;  npDin  vi.  24; 

^Pin  ii.  25 ;  nhv:in  iv.  3. 

b.  In  Ezra,  j;ijn  iv.  15. 

c.  In  N.  S.     No  examples. 

d.  In  Eg.  Ar.    n^l^^   Sach.  often;   j;*Tja  Sach.  43.1.5; 

"l^i3  Sach.  ix.  17,  ii.  28,  3R27;  nSJ^  Sach,  ier. 

e.  In  Nab.     No  examples. 

f.  In  Pal.     No  examples. 

g.  In  Onkelos.    Only  in  plijn  Ex.  xxxii.  19.    See  Dalman, 

p.  102. 
h.  In  Syr.  only  in  «n^i3  ;  but  "  Nun  stroked  out  later  ", 

Noldeke  §28. 
i.  In  Man.  "manchmal",  and  especially  «^for  dd,  ng  for 
gg,  mb  for  bb.     Noldeke,  §68. 


382  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

j.  In  Sam.  apparently  never.    The  so-called  Nun  epen- 
thetic is  not  an  insertion.    See  Petermann,  p.  9. 

(4)  It  is  epenthetic: 

a.  Always  with  the  impf.  before  suffixes.    Marti  §52b. 

b.  Always  with  the  impf.  before  suffixes,    id. 

c.  In  N.  S.  nitrns^  Had.  31 ;  but,  r\'<i}rd^.  without  Nun 

in  the  same  line,  n3D3n"''l  Zakir  11  20. 

d.  In  Eg.  Ar.,  it  is  frequent,  •'ni^pn''  Sak.  A6  na^n[n] 

id  C3  (unsicher,  Lidg).    And  almost  always  in  the 
Sachau, papyri.     (See  id.  p.  272). 

e.  In  Nab.  no  examples  have  been  found. 

f.  In  Palm,  ni^''^''  T  11.  b23  ;  but  ''rT'nnS''  CI.  Gan.  I*. 

g.  In  Onk.,  always  with  impf.  before  suffixes.      See  Dal- 

man  pp.  368-374. 
h.  In  Syriac  it  is  not  found.     See  Noldeke  §28. 
i .  In  Mandean  it  is  apparently  not  used.     See  Noldeke 

§2CXD. 

j .  The  Samaritan  often  employs  it.    See  Petermann  p.  9, 
and  numerous  examples  on  p.  32. 

(5)  It  is  retained  at  end  of  syllable: 

a.  In  Dan.  DSin  v.  2,  iptj^n  v.  3,  inji  ii.  16,  nnJW  iv.  9, 

nmn  v.  20,  ••ms^s  ii.  46,  jinj^         ,  nn3« 

b.  In  Ezra  pS3n  v.  14  bis.,  vi.  5,  npT^H  iv.  22,  pTinn  iv.  13, 

nonna  iv.  15,  jnits  vii.  20,  jn^n  vii.  20,  pjnr  iv.  13, 
ptaan  vi.  9. 

c.  In  N.  S.  ••mnD^''  Tay.  14,  [pS]3n"'  Tay.  iii.  21,  ^i^fi^  Ner. 

i.  13,  n:::n  Ner.  i.  12. 

d.  In  Eg.  Ar.,  almost  always.     In  Sayce-Cowley  34  exs ; 

in  Sachau   pap.      34   exs.      See   SC,  p.    18,   and 
Sachau  p.  271. 

e.  In  Nab.,  pBi>  CIS.197',  jr3>  CIS.I97'.',  I98^    nnnjK 

Litt.  ii.  8. 

f.  In  Palm.,  never  in  examples  found. 

g.  In  Onk.,  aD3''D,  «ni''3,  «nrty  and  before  and  n  and  j^, 

Dalm.  p.  1 01,  and  often  at  end  of  word.    id.  102,  e.  g. 

pn  for  nan. 

h.  In  Syr.,  «nr,  Wnj'':3B^,  «rino  and  before  He.     See 
Noldeke  §28. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  283 

i.  In  Mand.,  N'lSI^,  «nrDty,  «n:''-rD,  «nr:i.    See  Noldeke 

Gr.  p.  52. 
j.  In  Sam.  pSin,  and  often.     See  Pet.  p.  35. 

It  will  be  noted  that  so  far  as  examples  are  found  there  is  an 
exact  agreement  in  the  use  of  Nun  between  Daniel  and  the 
North  Syrian  and  Egypto-Aramaic.  The  latter  is  in  perfect 
agreement  with  Daniel  in  every  one  of  the  five  particulars. 
The  examples  of  the  uses  of  Nun  are  extremely  rare  in  the 
Nabatean  and  Palmyrene,  so  that  no  comparison  can  be  made. 
The  agreement  in  the  Onkelos  is  close,  but  an  agreement  for 
a  late  date  and  a  "  near  alliance  "  of  the  dialect  of  Onkelos 
with  that  of  Daniel  loses  its  force  in  view  of  the  like  close 
agreement  between  the  dialect  of  Daniel  and  that  of  the  in- 
scriptions of  Northern  Syria  and  of  Egypt. 

8.  Use  of  SodhCj  'Ayin  and  Qoph.  The  fact  that  Daniel 
writes  the  word  for  "  earth,  land  "  with  an  'Ayin  instead  of  a 
Qoph  is  taken  by  Dr.  Driver  as  a  positive  proof  that  ''  the 
Aramaic  of  Daniel  was  not  that  spoken  at  Babylon  in  Daniel's 
age  ".  In  support  of  this  position  he  cites  the  fact  that  in 
CIS  1-4,  7,  II,  28,  35  from  Nineveh  and  in  Clay's  Aramaic 
Endorsements,  Nos.  5,  8,  11,  29,  40  from  Babylon  the  word 
is  written  KpIS  and  in  Daniel  i<]^1i<.  He  might  have  added, 
that  in  the  Sendshirli  inscriptions  in  like  manner  this  is 
the  case  not  merely  for  this  word  but  for  two  others ;  and  that 
the  inscription  from  Zakir,  also  writes  'arqa.  Further,  he 
might  have  said  that  in  some  of  the  Aramaic  papyri  from 
Egypt  the  word  is  written  with  a  Qoph. 

But,  he  should  have  added,  also,  in  order  that  we  should 
have  a  fair  statement  of  the  case,  first,  that  the  papyri  of  the 
5th  century  B.C.  have  already  begun  to  write  this  word  with  an 
^Ayin.  Some  of  them  use  *Ayin  alone,  as  for  example,  the 
Sachau  papyri  and  Sayce-Cowley  A  and  G.  Some  use  Qoph 
alone,  as  C,  D,  E,  of  Sayce-Cowley  and  B  uses  both. 

Secondly,  it  might  be  added  that  the  papyri  also  write 
t<"lDp  for  no^t  "wool"  and  pV  for  J>j;  Bib.  Aram.  j;«  as 
also  both  pny  and  V^V  where  the  Targum  and  Syriac  have 
y^«  "  to  meet  ". 

Thirdly,  it  should  be  added  that  the  Targum  of  Onkelos 
writes     pl^l  where  the  Syriac  has  p*^p*T» 


a84  THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL 

Fourthly,  that  the  Nabatean  inscription  of  El-He jra  A.D.i. 
has  Dip  for  the  Phoenician  and  Hebrew  ^^V  "  fine  ". 

Fifthly,  that  the  Samaritan  Targum  has  Tjr  (e.  g.  Lev. 
ix.  lo)  where  the  Syriac  has  Ip^ .  Further,  it  often  writes 
pDty  for  V^^* 

Sixthly,  the  Mandean  writings  (6th  to  9th  cent.  A.D.)  still 
write  «p"lK»  They  also  write  t<^^pt<  for  "IDX  «nBt<p«  for  nsj;, 
Wp«  for  W«P  =  ]«X  (See  Noldeke  Mand.  Gram.  p.  72) ;  but 
they  use  the  Hebrew  spelling  for  J^y  "  tree  ". 

Seventhly,  in  .the  Aramaic  verse  in  Jeremiah  (x.  11)  both 
writings  of  the  word  for  earth  occur. 

Eighthly,  Ezra  always  uses  'Ay in  just  as  Daniel  does. 

From  the  above  statements  it  will  be  seen  that  Qoph  was 
used  to  denote  this  sound  from  the  9th  century  B.C.  to  the 
9th  century  A.D.,  and  'Ayin  from  the  5th  century  to  the 
present.  It  is  true  that  if  Daniel  were  written  in  the  6th 
century  B.C.,  it  will  have  been  the  first  record  known  in  which 
'Ayin  was  used.  But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  first,  that  in 
the  5th  century  Ezra  also  uses  it  always  just  as  Daniel  does; 
secondly,  that  in  the  same  century  the  Aramaic  papyri  use 
both;  thirdly,  that  there  may  have  been  two  uses  side  by  side 
at  Babylon  in  the  6th  century  B.C.  as  well  as  at  Syene  in  the 
5th ;  and  lastly,  that  someone  must  have  used  this  writing  first, 
and  why  not  Daniel? 

9.  Use  of  Other  Letters.  With  regard  to  the  letters,  Teth, 
Tau,  Shin,  Sin  and  Samekh,  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that 
they  are  written  in  general  in  the  same  way  as  in  the  Aramaic 
papyri  and  in  Ezra,  both  from  the  5th  century  B.C. 

II.  Forms  and  Inflections 

1.  With  regard  to  the  pronouns  of  Daniel,  it  may  be  said, 
that  with  the  exception  that  dh  is  written  with  Dolath  instead 
of  with  Zayin,  they  agree  more  closely  in  writing,  form  and 
inflection  with  those  of  the  old  Aramaic  dialects  found  in  the 
papyri  and  in  the  inscriptions  of  Syria  than  they  do  with  those 
of  the  later  inscriptions  and  Targums,  or  with  those  of  the 
Syriac,  Mandean  and  Samaritan  documents. 

2.  With  regard  to  the  nouns,  also,  not  merely  in  the  forms 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  285 

found  but  in  the  way  they  are  written  and  in  the  inflection, 
they  show  an  almost  exact  resemblance  to  the  Northern  Syrian 
inscriptions  from  the  9th  to  the  7th  century  B.C.,  and  to 
the  nouns  found  in  the  Egyptian  papyri  from  the  5th  cen- 
tury B.C. 

3.  With  respect  to  the  particles,  the  dialects  differ  so  much 
both  in  the  character  and  number  of  the  particles  used  and  in 
the  meanings  attached  to  them,  that  we  shall  have  to  postpone 
treatment  of  them  to  another  time.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  with 
regard  to  the  writing,  forms,  inflection  and  use,  of  those  found 
in  Daniel  there  is  no  good  reason  for  supposing  that  they  may 
not  have  characterized  a  dialect  written  at  Babylon  in  the 
6th  century  B.C. 

4.  With  regard  to  the  verbs  used  in  Daniel,  we  shall  go 
more  into  particulars.  Next  to  the  spelling  of  words  in  gen- 
eral the  forms  of  the  verbs  and  the  spelling  of  them  are  made 
by  Dr.  Driver  the  principal  ground  upon  which  he  bases  his 
conclusion  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is  late. 

As  to  agreements  in  forms,  all  of  the  old  Aramaic  dialects, 
from  the  earliest  to  the  old  Syriac  and  Mandean  inclusive, 
have  the  three  active  stems  Peal,  Paal,  and  Aphel  or  Haphal, 
and  the  two  reflective  or  passive  stems  Ethpeel  and  Ethpaal, 
varying  mostly  only  in  certain  particulars  of  spelling.  We 
shall  not  go  into  these  variations  except  as  it  is  necessary  to 
make  clear  the  three  points  specified  by  Dr.  Driver  in  LOT 
P-  504. 

a.  His  first  point  is,  that  the  imperfect  of  Lomadh  Aleph 
verbs  in  Nabatean  and  in  the  Palmyrene  Tariff  is  found  with 
Aleph  and  not  with  Yodh.  The  inference  that  we  are  intended 
to  draw  is,  that  inasmuch  as  Daniel  has  in  like  manner  Aleph 
and  not  Yodh,  therefore  it  is  from  the  same  region  and  age. 

But,  first,  while  it  is  true  that  Yodh  alone  has  thus  far  been 
found  in  the  inscriptions  antedating  600  B.C.  as  the  con- 
cluding consonant  of  Lomadh  He  verbs,  it  is  questionable  if 
they  should  be  brought  into  this  comparison.  For  in  Egypto- 
Aramaic,  the  forms  ending  in  Yodh  are  all  apparently  Jussive 
forms,  (See  Sachau  p.  270)  and  these  forms  are  carefully 
distinguished  from  the  forms  ending  in  He  which  are  the 
regular  indicative  forms.     In  the  Sendshirli  inscriptions  also. 


286  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

three  of  the  forms  are  also  certainly  Jussives,  one  of  them  oc- 
curring with  the  negative  *al  as  in  the  Sachau  papyri ;  and  the 
fourth  follows  a  Wau  that  is  probably  a  Wau  conversive, 
since  it  follows  a  perfect  and  is  used  in  the  same  sense.  Fol- 
lowing the  analogy  of  the  Hebrew,  which  uses  the  Jussive^ 
or  a  form  like  it,  after  Wau  conversive,  we  would  classify 
this  fourth  imperfect  in  the  Hadad  inscription  as  a  Jussive 
also.  The  use  of  a  Wau  conversive  in  the  Aramaic  of  the 
Hadad  inscription  is  rendered  probable  by  its  certain  use  in 
the  Zakir  inscription,  where  we  have  ^Dfc<''1,  KID^^I  and  •'33P1*. 

The  forms  in  Yodh  of  the  early  inscriptions  being  thus 
ruled  out  of  the  discussion,  we  find  that  the  Egypto-Aramaic 
except  in  the  Jussive  employs  consistently  a  He  at  the  end  of 
the  imperfect  of  Lomadh  He  verbs  and  Aleph  at  the  end  of 
Lomadh  Aleph  verbs;  whereas  Daniel  employs  Aleph  usually 
for  both  and  exceptionally  He  for  both.  Nabatean  goes  one 
step  further  and  never  employs  anything  but  Aleph  for  both. 
The  Palmyrene  Tariff  uses  He  once;  but  everywhere  else, 
both  in  the  Tariff  and  elsewhere  uses  Aleph.  The  Aramaic 
of  the  Targums  and  Talmud  has  uniformly  a  Yodh  at  the 
end.  The  Syriac  as  uniformly  has  Aleph,  while  the  Mandean 
has  Yodh  followed  by  Aleph.  The  Samaritan  commonly  em- 
ploys Yodh,  but  He  is  occasionally  found. 

From  all  which  it  appears:  First,  that  the  only  Aramaic 
that  employs  He  at  the  end  of  its  Lomadh  He  verbs  in  the 
imperfect  is  the  Aramaic  that  was  written  by  Jews,  or  those 
directly  influenced  by  Jews,  such  as  the  Aramaic  papyri  of 
Egypt,  and  the  works  of  Daniel  and  Ezra.  The  few  sporadic 
cases  of  its  employment  in  Samaritan  and  the  one  instance  of 
its  use  in  Palmyrene  may  be  attributed  to  the  same  influence. 
Secondly,  it  appears  that  Yodh  was  used  by  the  Arameans 
who  lived  and  wrote  in  Palestine  after  Ezra's  time  as  is  evi- 
dent from  the  usage  of  the  Jewish  Targums  and  of  the  Tal- 
mud and  of  the  Samaritans.  It  was  used,  also,  by  the  Jews 
who  wrote  the  Babylonian  Talmud;  and  in  the  forms  of  the 
imperfect  used  in  the  Hadad  inscription  from  Northern  Syria. 
Thirdly,  Aleph  was,  with  the  one  exception  in  Palmyrene  noted 
above,  the  universal  ending  in  the  dialects  between  Palestine 
and  Syria  on  the  one  hand  and  the  Mandeans  on  the  other, 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  287 

i.  e.,  among  the  Nabateans,  the  Palmy renes,  and  the  so-called 
Syrians.  Fourthly,  the  Mandeans  used  both  at  once  and  to- 
gether, i.  e.  a  Yodh  followed  by  an  Aleph.  Fifthly,  Daniel 
being  in  the  central  country  between  the  two  extremes  may  well 
have  used  Aleph,  as  all  other  dialects  in  the  central  zone  have 
done,  his  exceptional  use  of  He  being  due  to  Hebrew  influence. 

b.  Dr.  Driver's  second  point  is,  that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel 
is  late,  because  a  Hophal  has  been  discovered  in  the  Palmyrene 
Tariff,  written  in  137  A.D.  He  might  have  added,  because 
another  is  found  in  the  Targum  of  Onkelos,  and  two  in  the 
Jerusalem  Targum  I.  (See  Dalman  p.  253).  These  last  are 
probably  not  mentioned  by  him  because  they  are  so  sporadic 
and  obviously  due  to  Hebrew  influence.  As  to  the  first  point, 
it  may  be  said, 

(i)  That  it  is  doubtful  if  there  be  a  Hophal  form  in  the 
Tariff.  The  words  ^n^''  and  pr  may  be  otherwise  ex- 
plained in  perfect  harmony  with  common  Aramaic  usage,  and 
are  so  explained  by  Duval  and  Cooke.  If  n^«  be  a  passive 
of  the  causative  stem  and  not  the  active,  it  is  formed  rather 
after  the  analogy  of  the  Arabaic  4th  stem  than  after  that  of 
the  Hebrew,  or  Bib.  Aramaic  Hophal.  Our  readers  will  no- 
tice that  these  verbal  forms  are  without  any  vowel,  or  other 
points  that  distinguish  species  or  stem.  Whether  they  be 
Hophals  or  not  depends  upon  the  pointing  that  you  insert. 

(2)  That  in  this  same  Tariff,  we  find  the  Ittaphal  used 
six  times  in  the  passive  of  the  causative  stem.  Now,  it  is  a 
noteworthy  fact  that  no  dialect  that  uses  the  Hophal  uses  the 
Ittaphal  also,  and  vice  versa.  The  Sendshirli  inscriptions  have 
the  Hophal  once  in  the  participle  HD'D  from  niD  .  Daniel 
has  the  Hophal  of  nine  verbs  in  eleven  different  forms.  Ezra 
has  but  one  Hophal.  But  none  of  these  three  dialects  (or 
two,  if  you  put  Ezra  in  the  same  dialect  with  Daniel)  has  an 
Ittaphal. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Aramaic  of  the  Talmud  and  Tar- 
gums,  of  the  Palmyrene  inscriptions,  of  Syriac  and  Mandean, 
and  Samaritan,  employs  the  Ittaphal  to  the  entire  exclusion  of 
the  Hophal  or  Ophal,  unless  these  unpointed  Palmyrene  words 
be  treated  as  such.  The  Targum  of  Onkelos  has  20  verbs  in 
the  Ittaphal  and  not  one  case  of  the  Hophal,  unless  a  variant 


288  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

reading  in  Ex.  xix.  13  be  classed  as  such  (See  Dalman  Gram, 
der  jud.-pal.  Aram.  §  §  59.6  and  64). 

(3)  If  it  is  right  for  Dr.  Driver  to  make  as  much  as  he 
does  of  the  agreements  between  Daniel  and  the  Nabatean  and 
Palmyrene  inscriptions  as  regards  the  writing  of  Aleph  and 
He  in  certain  forms  in  order  to  prove  that  they  are  or  may 
have  been  written  near  the  same  time,  it  is  no  more  than  fair 
to  suggest  that  the  fact  that  Daniel  uses  a  Hophal  while  in 
Palmyrene  we  find  an  Ophal  might  better  be  regarded  as 
supporting  the  theory  that  the  two  dialects  were  spoken  at 
different  dates.  In'  fact,  since  the  bulk  of  the  population  of 
Palmyra  was  Arab  and  since  many  proper  names,  especially 
of  gods,  and  several  common  names  of  Arabic  origin  appear 
in  their  literature,  we  might  expect  to  find  in  the  Palmyrene 
traces  of  Arabic  grammatical  usages.  (Cooke  N.  S.  Insc.  p. 
264).  This  ^tt^t?  might  indeed  be  the  passive  of  the  4th 
stem  ^ushira  and  be  due  to  Arabaic  influence;  just  as  the  Hop- 
hals  in  Daniel  and  the  Niphals  in  Samaritan  are  due  to  He- 
brew influence. 

The  relations  of  the  dialects,  so  far  as  the  forms  of  the 
verbs  are  concerned,  will  be  best  seen  from  the  series  of  tables 
to  be  found  in  the  Appendix.  From  these  tables  it  will  ap- 
pear that  no  two  dialects  agree  exactly  in  the  forms  used  by 
them.  As  to  forms  in  general  it  appears  that  Daniel  agrees 
more  nearly  with  Ezra  and  Egypto-Aramaic  than  with  any 
later  dialects.  As  to  the  Hophal,  the  possible  use  of  one  form 
of  it  in  Pal.  and  Onk.  is  offset  by  the  certain  use  of  the  Hophal 
in  Ezra  and  its  probable  use  in  Hadad  24  and  26. 

c.  Dr.  Driver  uses  the  fact  that  nT^j; ,  the  third  singular 
feminine  perfect  passive,  is  found  in  CIS  196:7,  a  Nabatean 
inscription  from  37  A.D.,  to  show  that  Daniel  may  have 
been  written  late.  We,  also,  think  that  this  is  a  perfect 
passive ;  though  in  regard  to  the  other  example  cited,  the  ^riD 
of  the  Palmyrene  Tariff,  we  agree  with  Prof.  Cooke  (NSI  p. 
334),  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  treat  it  as  a  passive,  whether 
Pual,  or  Peil.  We  do  think,  however,  that  it  would  have 
been  right  for  Dr.  Driver  to  have  cited  the  Samaritan  n3D3 
the  translation  in  Gen.  iii.   19  of  the  Hebrew  nnpb    "was 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  289 

taken";  as  also  the   HTHS   of  Meg.   Taan.      (See  Dalman 

P-  253). 

But  that  our  readers,  most  of  whom  are  not  specialists, 
may  be  able  to  estimate  these  facts  at  their  true  value  in  their 
relation  to  the  question  of  the  date  of  Daniel,  it  may  be  well 
to  add,  that  not  merely  Ezra  but  the  Aramaic  papyri  also,  make 
use  of  this  form.  Ezra  has  I^N'T'  in  v.  14  and  the  Sachau 
papyri  have  l^'^roi:)  in  i.  17  and  ii.  15,  nriN":)^  in  56  V.i.i; 
Dn^''«t5^  in  SC,  II  8;  all  of  which  are  certainly  true  Peil 
forms.  Prof.  Sachau  adds  further  the  forms  T^p ,  t:}J;  , 
y>r\:: ,  and  n*'^^ .  So  that  while  admitting  that  this  perfect 
passive  may  have  been  written  late,  the  arguments  from 
analogy  and  from  frequency  of  use  are  decidedly  in  favor  of 
an  early  date,  inasmuch  as  Ezra  and  the  Aramaic  papyri  are 
admittedly  from  the  5th  century  B.C.  Further,  the  argument 
that  the  late  isolated  forms  (one  each  in  Nabatean,  Samaritan 
and  the  Talmud)  may  have  been  used  through  imitation  of, 
or  under  the  influence  of,  the  Arabic,  which  forms  its  pas- 
sive regularly  in  this  way,  cannot  be  used  with  regard  to  the 
Aramaic  of  Egypt  in  the  5th  century  B.C. 

d.  The  third  plural  of  the  feminine  of  the  perfect  ends  in 
Wau  in  Daniel  v.  5,  vii.  20  and  also  in  Nabatean  in  Cooke 
80:1  and  85:1. 

It  is  well  known  that  in  Hebrew  the  one  form  *l^t2p  serves 
for  the  third  feminine  plural  as  well  as  for  the  masculine. 
In  Daniel,  this  usage  may  have  been  derived  from  the  He- 
brew. Unfortunately,  the  old  Aramaic  inscriptions  have  no 
example  of  the  feminine  plural  of  the  perfect. 

The  best  possible  explanations  of  the  form  M::]^  in  Naba- 
tean are  (i)  that,  like  the  Hebrew,  there  was  no  feminine 
form,  or  (2)  that  the  sculptor  followed  the  common  manner 
in  other  inscriptions,  where  the  masculine  form  is  always 
used,  or  (3)  that  he  used  the  masculine,  because  the  nearest 
noun  in  each  of  the  two  cases  is  masculine  in  form,  although 
the  name  of  a  woman. 

The  Sachau  papyri,  however,  give  us  one  form  of  the  femi- 
nine plural  imperfect  and  it  agrees  with  the  form  in  Daniel. 
I  refer  to  JDin"' ,  p.  169  of  Sachau's  papyri.  This  is  exactly 
like  the  liS^v   of  Dan.  iv.  18.     The  Nabatean  gives  us  but 


290  THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL 

one  example  of  the  imperfect  third  plural  feminine  and 
it  has  the  same  form  as  the  masculine,  i.  e.  p*iDpn'»  (See 
Cooke  NSI  p.  221  and  p.  240). 

It  will  be  noticed,  that  the  Qre  in  Daniel  has  corrected  the 
ending  ^  to  n^  ,  in  all  cases  in  the  perfect  where  it  has  a 
feminine  subject.  This  harmonizes  the  form  with  that  in  use 
in  the  Assyrian  and  in  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan. 
In  the  Jerusalem  Targum,  the  third  feminine  perfect  plural 
ends  in  an;  in  Syriac  in  en  or  a  silent  Yodh,  or  the  ending 
has  disappeared;  in  Mandean,  in  JW^  or  ^«,  but  usually  the 
ending  has  entirely  disappeared ;  in  Samaritan,  in    *•  >  J^  >   or  ] . 

To  sum  up,  the  third  feminine  plural  in  the  Kethiv  of 
Daniel  agrees  with  the  form  found  in  Nabatean,  and  the  Qre 
agrees  with  the  forms  found  in  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and 
Jonathan. 

The  third  feminine  imperfect  plural  in  Daniel  agrees  with 
that  found  in  the  Sachau  papyri  but  differs  from  that  found 
in  Nabatean.  In  this  case,  all  the  other  dialects  agree  with 
Daniel,  the  Nabatean  standing  alone. 

e.  The  Nun,  says  Dr.  Driver,  is  retained  in  the  imperfect 
of  Pe  Nun  verbs  in  the  Nabatean  just  as  in  Daniel.  A  more 
exact  statement  of  the  case  would  be,  that  the  Nun  has  been 
retained  in  all  of  the  examples  of  the  imperfect  of  Pe  Nun 
verbs  thus  far  found  in  Nabatean,  agreeing  in  this  respect 
with  the  comparatively  few  examples  found  in  Daniel  where 
Nun  is  not  assimilated.  A  fuller  statement  of  the  facts  with 
regard  to  the  writing  of  Nun  in  all  the  dialects  will  give  our 
readers  an  opportunity  of  judging  for  themselves  as  to  the  re- 
lation in  this  regard  between  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  and  of 
the  other  dialects. 

I.  As  to  the  retention  of  a  Nun  in  the  imperfect  of  verbs 
Pe  Nun,  Daniel  retains  once  only,  Nabatean  always,  whereas 
Daniel  assimilates  eight  times  and  Nabatean  never.  In  Ezra, 
the  Nun  is  retained  three  times,  assimilated  once.  In  Northern 
Aramaic  (Sendshirli  et  al.)  Nun  is  retained  four  times,  assimi- 
lated four.  In  Egypto-Aramaic,  Nun  is  retained  about  sev- 
enty times,  assimilated  about  three.  In  Palmyrene,  it  is  assimi- 
lated almost  always,  except  before  He  or  Ayin.  In  Samaritan, 
Nun  is  often  retained,  but  most  frequently  assimilated.     In 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL  291 

Syriac  it  is  assimilated  almost  always  and  in  Mandean  often. 

2.  Nun  is  inserted  often  in  Daniel  and  Mandean  and  not  in- 
frequently in  Egypto- Aramaic ;  never  in  Nabatean,  Palmyrene 
and  Samaritan,  nor  in  the  North  Syrian  inscriptions ;  in  Onke- 
los,  Ezra,  and  Syriac,  in  only  one  word  for  each.  Daniel  here 
agrees  on  the  one  hand  with  the  dialect  nearest  his  own  time 
and  on  the  other  with  that  nearest  to  Babylon. 

3.  In  regard  to  dropping  the  Nun  in  the  imperative  Peal, 
all  of  the  dialects  in  which  imperatives  are  found  agree.  No 
examples  have  been  found  in  Nabatean  or  Palmyrene. 

4.  In  regard  to  Nun  epenthetic,  it  is  always  found  with  the 
imperfect  before  suffixes  in  Daniel,  Ezra,  and  Onkelos ;  never 
in  Syriac  and  Mandean  and  there  are  no  examples  of  it  in 
Nabatean ;  nearly  always  in  the  North  Syrian  inscriptions  and 
in  Egypto- Aramaic  and  in  Samaritan;  and  once  in  Palmyrene 
and  once  not. 

f.  Dr.  Driver  suggests  that  Daniel  may  be  late  because  the 
word  for  ''  there  is  "  is  written  the  same  way  in  Nabatean  as 
in  Daniel,  i.  e.  Tl'^i^ .  This  he  says  to  overthrow  the  supposi-> 
tion  that  Daniel  cannot  be  late  because  Onkelos  has  n''«  .  A 
fuller  statement  with  regard  to  ''n''i<  may  be  made  so  as  to 
avoid  misunderstandings.  The  long  form  is  used  in  Daniel 
without  suffixes,  ten  times;  in  Ezra,  twice;  in  Sayce-Cowley, 
fifteen  times ;  in  Sachau  papyri,  six  times ;  in  Nabatean,  twice. 
The  short  form  is  used  in  the  Targums  always ;  in  Palmyrene 
once  (the  only  time  found)  ;  in  Syriac  and  Mandean  always ;  in 
Egypto- Aramaic  once  only.     (i.  e.  in  Sachau  xxxi.  3). 

g.  Dr.  Driver  might  well  have  added  to  his  collection  of 
similarities  in  the  use  of  verb  forms  between  the  Nabatean  and 
Daniel  the  remarkable  fact  that  each  of  them  has  but  one 
Shaphel  form  and  that  from  the  same  root,  i.  e.,  ^fty 
Cooke  No.  1 01  :  12  (or  ^rti^  in  one  other  insc.  Duss  and 
Macleane,  No.  62).  To  be  sure,  this  form  is  found  in  other 
late  dialects,  but  not  from  this  verb  exclusively.  The  Gali- 
lean dialect  has  also  n:nj;^,  "^T^^  and  '•n^tS^.  Onkelos 
has  all  of  these  and  in  addition  ^''^ntr  and  isn^tt^ .  The 
Targum  of  Jonathan  adds  n^V^  and  T^n^ .  The  Jent- 
salem  Targums  use  seven  additional  forms.  The  Syriac  has 
at  least  twelve  of  these  forms;  the  Mandean,  six;  and  the 


apa  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

Modem  Syriac,  four.  Besides  these,  we  find  half  a  dozen 
forms  in  New  Hebrew. 

In  the  Bible,  Ezra  has  the  form  from  two  verbs,  to  wit 
•'re^  and  ^^3ty . 

Fortunately,  the  form  nv^  the  only  one  that  Daniel 
employs,  is  found  also  in  the  old  Aramaic  inscriptions  and  it 
is  the  only  form  yet  found.  It  occurs  in  the  Sachau  papyri 
xxxxii.  14,  xii.  5  and  56  obv.  i.  6.  So  that  the  use  of  this 
form  in  Aramaic  documents  can  now  be  traced  back  to  a 
time  when  men  vwho  may  have  known  Daniel  were  still  living. 

h.  Dr.  Driver  might  also  have  mentioned  the  fact  that  the 
preformative  He  in  the  causative  stem,  which  Daniel  employs 
so  often,  is  no  evidence  of  an  early  date,  because  it  is  found, 
also,  in  Nabatean  in  the  form  Cpn  CIS  161.1.1  and  349.2. 
To  be  sure,  he  may  have  thought  this  to  be  unnecessary,  be- 
cause Onkelos  also  has  He  in  the  causative  of  the  verb  to 
know  (J^Tin)  and  in  the  borrowed  Hebrew  word  ]''D''n.  As 
we,  however,  think  that  Daniel's  use  of  He  in  this  form  is 
one  of  the  strongest  proofs  of  its  early  date,  we  shall  present 
the  facts  as  to  the  preformative  of  the  causative  stem  in  the 
Aramaic  dialects. 

1.  The  Syriac  and  Palmy rene  always  have  Aleph. 

2.  The  early  inscriptions  of  Zakir,  Sendshirli  and  Assyria 
and  the  Aramaic  papyri  always  have  He. 

3.  The  Nabatean  always  has  Aleph  except  in  two  cases,  both 
from  the  same  verb;  the  Targum  of  Onkelos  has  Aleph  in 
scores  of  cases,  He  in  but  two  verbs,  one  of  them  certainly 
borrowed  from  the  Hebrew;  the  Mandean  uses  He  nearly  al- 
ways, Aleph  only  occasionally;  the  Samaritan  usually  has 
Aleph,  but  sometimes  He;  the  Targum  of  Jonathan  uses  He 
in  the  one  form  j;sin  and  the  Jerusalem  Targums  have  He 
in  eight  or  nine  verbs,  manifestly  under  the  influence  of  He- 
brew, as  is  doubtless  the  case  in  the  Samaritan  also. 

4.  Ezra  has  Aleph  once  only  and  He  everywhere  else. 

5.  Daniel  has  Aleph  but  twice  and  He  in  numerous  in- 
stances. 

It  will  thus  be  seen,  that  in  this  respect,  the  usage  of  Daniel 
is  decidedly  with  the  earlier  dialects  and  against  the  later  ones. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  293 


III.  Syntax 

We  shall  not  have  space  here  to  discuss  fully  the  syn- 
tactical relation  of  Daniel  to  the  other  dialects.  As  an  ex- 
ample of  the  importance  of  this  subject  in  determining  the 
dialectical  affinities,  we  shall  mention  only  the  manner  of  de- 
noting the  accusative. 

1.  All  of  the  dialects  agree  in  that  they  employ  no  particle 
before  the  indefinite  direct  object  and  in  that  they  frequently 
omit  it  before  the  definite  direct  object  as  well. 

2.  Regarding  the  use  of  the  particles,  the  following  points 
are  to  be  noticed : 

a.  Daniel,  the  Egyptian  papyri,  the  Syriac  and  the  Man- 
dean,  frequently  employ  Lomadh  before  the  definite  direct  ob- 
ject, but  not  without  many  variations  of  usage  one  from 
the  other,  especially  in  the  case  of  the  Mandean.  The  Zakir, 
Sendshirli  and  Nabatean  inscriptions  never  employ  Lomadh 
with  the  direct  object,  and  Palmy rene  but  once  only.  Ezra  and 
the  Samaritan  seldom  employ  it.  Onkelos  sometimes  uses  it, 
but  preceded  by  a  pronominal  suffix  after  the  verb.  In  this 
respect  it  agrees  with  the  common  usage  in  the  Mandean. 

b.  The  Zakir  inscription  always  uses  n''t<  before  the  defi- 
nite direct  object  except  when  it  is  accompanied  by  a  dem- 
onstrative pronoun. 

Onkelos,  the  Samaritan,  and  the  Nabatean  often  use  it 
(written  n*'). 

Palmyrene,  Daniel  and  the  Sendshirli  inscriptions  have  it 
once  each. 

In  Syriac  it  is  seldom  employed,  and  then  mostly  in  the 
Bible  to  render  the  Hebrew  rii<  . 

Ezra,  the  Egyptian  papyri,  and  the  Mandean,  never  employ 
it. 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  above  that  in  respect  to  the  use  of 
Lomadh  Daniel  disagrees  with  all  the  dialects  with  which  Dr. 
Driver  says  it  is  "  nearly  allied  ",  and  that  it  agrees  most 
nearly  with  the  Egypto- Aramaic,  the  one  written  just  about 
the  time  that  Daniel  is  said  to  have  lived,  and  with  the  Syriac 


294  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

and  Mandean,  that  were  written  in  the  regions  the  nearest  to 
Babylon. 

With  regard  to  the  use  of  H"*  as  the  sign  of  the  definite 
object,  Daniel  employs  it  but  once.  In  this  respect  he  differs 
decidedly  from  Onkelos  and  the  Nabatean,  and  agrees  most 
nearly  with  the  Sendshirli  of  the  8th  century  B.C.,  and  with 
the  Palmyrene.  That  it  is  employed  so  frequently  in  the 
earliest  of  all  the  inscriptions,  that  of  Zakir  and  also  in  the 
Sendshirli,  permits  of  its  use  by  Daniel  in  the  6th  century  B.C. 

IV.  Vocabulary 

In  discussing  the  vocabulary  of  Daniel  we  shall  consider  in 
order  the  relation  that"  it  bears  to  the  vocabularies  of  Onkelos, 
the  Nabateans,  the  Palmy renes,  and  the  Targum  of  Jonathan. 

a.  Onkelos.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  vocabulary  of  Daniel 
is  not  "  nearly  allied  '*  to  that  of  Onkelos  as  will  sufficiently 
appear  from  the  following  evidence  which  the  writer  has  se- 
lected from  a  large  number  of  similar  proofs. 

I.  Let  us  call  up  the  testimony  of  the  verbs  employed  in  the 
two  dialects  to  denote  the  idea  "  to  put,  to  set ". 

Daniel  employs  U**^  ten  times  in  this  sense.  It  is  the  only 
word  used  by  him  to  express  this  idea.  Ezra  uses  it  sixteen 
times;  Zakir  four  times;  Sendshirli,  four;  Nerab,  three;  the 
Sachau  papyri,  thirteen  times;  and  Teima,  once.  Onkelos 
never  uses  it  but  once  for  certain  (Ler.  1914)  and  perhaps  in 
one  other  place  (Gen.  1.  26)  where  the  text  is  disputed. 
This  is  most  noteworthy  inasmuch  as  D''C^  "  to  put "  occurs 
in  the  Hebrew  Pentateuch  151  times  and  fT'tfi^  of  like  meaning, 
eighteen  times.  The  common  word  in  Onkelos  to  render  these 
words  is  i^^^  by  which  he  translates  the  Hebrew  W^^  130 
times  and  n'»tt^  fourteen  times.  The  Hebrew  W^^  he  renders 
also  by  «:d  twelve  times ;  «nK^  and  ITD  three  times  each ;  1T3 , 
lij?  and  *1DW  once  each.  The  Hebrew  n''^  he  renders  also  by 
«ja,  in\  and  inj;  once  each.  The  one  time  that  Onkelos 
does  use  D''tt^  (Lev.  xix.   14),  it  is  a  translation  of  jni . 

Further,  it  should  be  remarked  with  regard  to  D''ty,  that 
neither  the  Targum  of  Jonathan,  nor  the  Nabatean  nor  the 
Palmyrene  uses  it  at  all. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL  295 

And  again,  it  should  be  observed,  that  in  Syriac  and  Man- 
dean,  both  belonging  to  what  is  called  Eastern  Aramaic,  W^^ 
is  the  ordinary  verb  for  "  to  put "  just  as  it  is  in  the  North 
Syrian  and  Egypto-Aramaic  inscriptions  and  in  Ezra  and 
Daniel. 

Again,  it  should  be  observed  on  the  other  hand,  that  Daniel 
does  use  «1ty  twice  (iii.  29,  v.  21),  but  never  in  the  sense  in 
which  it  is  employed  in  Onkelos.  In  Onkelos  it  always  means 
"  to  set,  to  put,  to  make  " ;  but  in  Daniel  it  means  "  to  be  or 
make  like  ".  This  meaning  in  Daniel  is  like  that  found  in  the 
Egypto-Aramaic,  the  Syriac,  and  the  Mandean,  where  the 
primary  meaning  was  "  to  be  at  par  ",  "  to  be  equal  to  " ;  hence, 
"  to  be  worth  "  in  a  business  sense  and  "  to  be  worthy  "  or 
"  to  agree  "  in  a  moral  sense.  It  is  so  used  seven  times  in  the 
SC  papyri  and  frequently  in  both  Syriac  and  Mandean. 

Finally,  of  the  other  eight  verbs  which  Onkelos  uses  to 
translate  Ct^  and  H'^ty  Daniel  employs  all  but  yiO  and  IDS  ;  but 
all  of  them  only  and  always  in  a  sense  different  entirely 
from  that  in  which  they  are  employed  in  Onkelos  as  a  render- 
ing for  the  two  Hebrew  words  for  "  to  put ",  except  in  the 
case  of  the  one  word  IDp  which  Onkelos  uses  for  D''tt^  but 
once  and  for  rC'^  not  at  all.  Thus  HiuJ  is  used  in  Daniel 
in  the  sense  of  "  to  number  "  (three  times),  Pa.  "  to  appoint  " 
(three  times).  So  also  in  Dan.  vii.  25,  «1t5^  "to  loose" 
(five  times);  nT2  "to  cut  out",  (twice);  2'n'^  "to  give, 
deliver  over  "  (twenty  times,  in  Ezra  eight  times)  ;  T)]^  "  to 
mix",  (four  times). 

We  hope  our  readers  will  peruse  the  preceding  paragraphs 
twice  at  least,  that  they  may  fully  appreciate  the  data  therein 
presented.  Here  is  an  idea  for  the  expression  of  which  the 
Hebrew  Pentateuch  uses  two  words  169  times.  That  one  of 
these  two  words  which  the  Hebrew  employs  151  times  is  ren- 
dered in  Onkelos  by  a  word  that  is  never  used  in  this  sense 
in  Daniel,  whereas  Daniel  uses  to  denote  the  idea  the  same 
word  that  is  found  in  Hebrew.  Further,  the  Targum  of  Jona- 
than, the  Nabatean,  and  the  Palmyrene  agree  with  Onkelos  in 
not  using  D**^  while  the  old  inscriptions  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  eastern  dialects  on  the  other,  agree  with  Daniel  in  using  it 
and  also  in  their  use  of  t<*lty.     Lastly,  of  the  eight  other  words 


296  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

found  in  Onkelos  to  render  D"'K^  and  r\*^^ ,  Daniel  uses  six, 
but  only  one  of  them  in  a  sense  that  might  be  deemed  equiva- 
lent to  that  of  the  verb  "  to  put ". 

If  we  had  space,  we  would  like  to  add  a  number  of  other 
demonstrations  of  like  character  with  the  above,  some  of 
which  would  be  almost  or  quite  as  convincing.  We  hope  that 
this  one  will  be  sufficient  to  make  the  reader  pause  at  least  for 
further  light  upon  the  subject  before  accepting  the  statement 
that  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel  is  "  nearly  allied  "  to  that  of  On- 
kelos. ^ 

2.  Not  merely,  however,  in  the  pure  Aramaic  words  em- 
ployed, but  also  in  the  foreign  words  that  are  found  in  them, 
do  the  dialectical  differences  between  Daniel  and  Onkelos  ap- 
pear. 

(i)  Daniel  uses  three  words  which  seem  to  be  Greek. 
These  words  are  names  of  musical  instruments,  and  things  of 
this  kind  nearly  always  even  to  this  day  bear  names  which  indi- 
cate more  or  less  definitely  the  source,  national  or  personal, 
from  which  they  came.  We  are  not  going  to  discuss  at  this 
time  the  possibility  of  Greek  words  having  been  found  in 
Aramaic  in  the  6th  century  B.C.  We  shall  only  remark  in 
this  connection,  that  Prof.  Sachau  thinks  he  has  discovered 
three  Greek  words  and  one  Latin  one  in  the  papyri  of  the  5th 
century  B.C.  But,  when  comparing  the  vocabulary  of  Daniel 
with  that  of  Onkelos  with  which  it  is  said  to  be  "  closely  al- 
lied ",  the  great  question  is  not  how  does  it  happen  that  there 
are  three  Greek  words  in  Daniel,  but  rather  why  are  there  no 
more  than  three.  Dalman  in  his  Grammar  of  the  Jewish- 
Palestinian  Aramaic,  pages  184-187,  gives  a  list  of  twenty- 
five  Greek  nouns  that  occur  in  Onkelos.  On  page  183,  he 
gives  two  denominative  verbs  found  in  Onkelos  that  are  de- 
rived from  Greek  nouns  that  had  been  taken  over  into  the 
dialect  of  the  people  from  among  whom  the  Targum  origi- 
nated. Moreover,  these  Greek  words  do  not  all  occur  in  one 
section  and  in  one  phrase  as  in  Daniel,  but  they  are  scattered 
all  through  the  Pentateuch  from  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis 
to  the  latter  part  of  Deuteronomy.  These  words  do  not  de- 
note articles  of  commerce  merely,  as  is  the  case  in  Daniel,  but 
governmental,  geographical,  and  scientific  terms,  such  as  could 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  297 

have  come  into  use  only  after  the  conquest  of  Alexander.  So 
that,  as  far  as  Greek  words  are  concerned,  the  dialect  of 
Onkelos  differs  from  that  of  Daniel : 

a.  In  the  number  of  words  that  occur. 

b.  In  the  frequency  of  their  occurrence. 

c.  In  that  they  are  scattered  through  the  whole  book  in 
one  case  and  confined  to  a  single  section  and  phrase  in  the 
other. 

d.  In  that  one  borrows  names  of  musical  instruments  mere- 
ly, whereas  the  other  has  borrowed  names  of  stuffs,  stones, 
colors,  and  geographical,  commercial,  governmental  and  scien- 
tific terms.  In  Daniel,  such  borrowed  terms  are  prevailingly 
Babylonian  and  Persian,  never  Greek. 

e.  In  that  the  dialect  of  Onkelos  has  verbalized  two  Greek 
nouns  at  least,  whereas  all  of  Daniel's  verbs  are  Aramaic 
(or  Hebrew),  except  one,  and  it  is  Babylonian. 

(2)  The  Aramaic  of  Daniel,  according  to  Dr.  Driver,  has 
thirteen  Persian  words.  We  think  this  estimate  is  probably 
correct.  The  Targum  of  Onkelos,  however,  has  but  five  Per- 
sian words.  The  most  common  of  these,  DUns,  occurs  in  the 
Hebrew  of  Esther  and  Ecclesiastes,  once  in  each,  and 
four  times  in  the  Aramaic  of  Ezra  and  twice  in  that  of  Daniel. 
Another,  J3ty"lB,  occurs  also  in  the  Hebrew  of  Ezra  once  and 
in  the  Aramaic  three  times.  In  Onkelos,  it  occurs  only  in 
Deut.  xvii.  18.  The  other  three  are  found  in  Onkelos  once 
each.  The  Egyptian  papyri  have  ten  to  fifteen  Persian  com- 
mon names  besides  a  large  number  of  proper  names.  Ezra 
has  at  least  ten.  The  Greek  and  Babylonian  writers  of  the 
Persian  period  have  also  a  large  number  of  persian  words  (See 
Prof.  John  D.  Davis  in  the  Harper  Memorial  Volume).  The 
Nabatean,  on  the  other  hand,  has  no  Persian  word  and  the 
Palmy rene  only  one  common  name  (from  264  A.D.)  and  one 
proper  name  (from  125  A.D.)  In  the  Targum  of  Jonathan 
there  are  but  a  very  few  Persian  words. 

So  that  in  regard  to  the  Persian  words  employed,  Daniel  is 
seen  to  agree  with  the  writings  from  the  Persian  period,  and 
not  as  Dr.  Driver  suggests  with  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and 
Jonathan  and  with  the  Nabatean  and  Palmyrene  inscriptions. 

(3)  An  important  element  in  the  vocabulary  of  Daniel,  to 


298  THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 

which,  however,  Dr.  Driver  pays  no  attention,  are  the  Babylon- 
ian words  contained  in  it.  The  lately  discovered  documents  of 
this  once  important  language  have  enabled  us  to  explain  a 
number  of  words  as  of  genuine  Semitic  origin,  which  were 
formerly  supposed  to  be  of  Persian  origin,  or  to  be  Aramaic 
words  peculiar  to  Daniel.  Of  the  former  kind  are  many  proper 
names  such  as  Ashpenaz,  Beltshazzar,  Abednego  and  others. 
Of  the  latter  class  are  pri«,  VT,  ntfi^n,  CJirw,  nV'^ ,  ^riD,  and 
perhaps  "TjDJ  and  yrri .  Of  these  Babylonian  words,  Ezra  has 
about  eight  common  names  and  a  number  of  proper  ones,  such 
as  Sheshbazzar  and  Zerubbabel.  The  Egypto-Aramaic,  also, 
is  rich  in  Babylonian  terms  of  both  kinds,  there  being  from 
eleven  to  sixteen  Babylonian  common  names  and  a  large  num- 
ber of  proper  names  in  the  Sayce-Cowley  papyri  alone. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Targum  of  Onkelos  has  probably 
only  six  or  seven  words  of  Babylonian  origin  and  all  of  them 
are  found  in,  and  perhaps  most  if  not  all  of  them  derived  by, 
Onkelos  from  the  Babylonian  through  the  earlier  works  of 
Daniel  and  Ezra. 

b.  Vocabulary  of  the  Nabateans.  It  is  impossible  for  the 
writer  to  conceive  how  anyone  who  had  read  the  Nabatean 
inscriptions  could  assert  that,  so  far  as  vocabulary  is  concerned, 
the  language  is  "  nearly  allied  "  to  that  of  Daniel.  Take  for 
the  sake  of  comparison  with  Daniel  the  El  Hejra  inscription  of 
A.D.I  .(Cooke  p.  220).  There  are  sixty-three  words  in  this 
inscription.  Fourteen  of  these  are  proper  names,  of  which 
one  is  the  name  of  a  place,  one  of  a  month,  five  the  names  of 
gods,  and  seven  the  names  of  persons.  All  of  these  are  Arabic 
except  the  name  of  the  month  Tebeth  which  is  Babylonian. 
There  are  forty-nine  other  words,  twenty-five  of  which  are 
found  in  Daniel.  But  of  these  three  are  pronouns  and  eleven 
are  particles.  The  five  verbs  are  I^V »  jrii ,  ^HD ,  pS3  and  pT, 
to  which  may  be  added  TT^i^  "  there  is  ",  all  of  which  are 
found  in  Egypto-Aramaic  and  all  but  pT  in  Ezra.  They  are 
found  in  Syriac,  Mandean,  and  all  in  Onkelos,  except 
pT  (one  or  two  derivatives  of  which  are  found,  however). 
Palmyrean,  also,  has  all  of  them.  The  nouns  are  Cj'^S ,  !*• , 
n^** ,  nitt^ ,  and  "^^a ,  all  words  that  are  found  in  Babylonian  and 
Hebrew  as  well  as  in  Egypto-Aramaic  and  all  later  Aramaic 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  299 

dialects.  As  to  the  twenty- four  words  that  are  not  found  in 
Daniel  five  are  Arabic  nouns  and  two  are  Arabic  verbs,  i.  e., 
Arabaic  roots  in  Aramaic  forms.  Moreover  one  word  is  pos- 
sibly Babylonian  and  one  possibly  Latin ;  six  are  particles,  one 
of  which  is  probably  Arabic;  one  is  of  doubtful  origin  and 
meaning;  and  the  others  are  the  words  for  "nine",  "self", 
"posterity",  "daughter",  "good",  "love",  and  for  "to 
bury  ". 

This  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  longest  and  most  distinctively 
Nabatean  inscription.  Occasionally,  we  meet  with  a  Greek 
word,  or  even  a  Latin  word,  and  there  is  possibly  one  Babylon- 
ian word,  but  there  are  no  Persian  words  and  no  Hebrew 
ones.  The  distinctive  feature  of  this  dialect  is  its  Arabisms. 
We  leave  the  intelligent  reader  to  form  his  own  judgment  as 
to  whether  the  Nabatean  dialect  is  "  nearly  allied  "  to  that  of 
Daniel,  in  which  there  are  no  Arabic  words,  but  many  Hebrew, 
Persian,  and  Babylonian  ones. 

c.  The  Vocabulary  of  the  Palmyrenes.  As  an  example  of 
the  Palmyrene  inscriptions,  we  shall  give  an  analysis  of  No. 
129  in  Cooke's  NSL  p.  249,  (A.D.  264).  The  first  line  has 
one  Aramaic,  one  Latin  and  two  Greek  words;  the  second, 
one  Aramaic,  two  Latin,  and  one  Persian  word;  the  third, 
one  Aramaic,  two  Latin,  and  one  Greek  word;  the  fourth, 
three  Aramaic,  one  Greek,  and  two  Arabic  words;  the  fifth, 
five  Aramaic,  and  one  Babylonian  word;  the  sixth,  one  Ara- 
maic word  followed  by  the  date. 

We  shall  give  also  a  translation  of  No.  127.  ''  Septiniius 
Worod,  most  excellent  (Gk)  procurator  (Gk)  ducenarius 
(Lat)  which  has  been  set  up  to  his  honor,  by  Julius  Aurelius 
Nebu-bad,  son  of  So'adu  (son  of)  Haira,  strategos  (Gk)  of 
the  colony  (Lat),  his  friend.  The  year  574  (i.  e.  263  A.D.), 
in  the  month  Kislul." 

Finally,  we  shall  give  a  translation  of  No.  121.  "  Statue  of 
Julius  Aurelius  Zabd-ile,  son  of  Maliku,  son  of  Maliku,  (son 
of)  Nassum,  who  was  strategos  (Gr)  of  the  colony  (Lat)  at 
the  coming  of  the  good  Alexander  Caesar;  and  he  served  when 
Crispinus  the  governor  was  here  and  when  he  brought  here 
the  legions  (Lat)  many  times;  and  he  was  chief  of  the  market 
and  spent  money  (Arab)  in  a  most  generous  manner;  and  he 


300 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 


led  his  life  peaceably  ( ?) ;  on  this  account  the  good  Yarhibal 
has  borne  witness  to  him,  and  also  Julius^  who  fosters  and 
loves  the  city;  the  council  (Gk)  and  people  (Gk)  have  set  up 
(this)  to  him  to  his  honor.    The  year  554."  (i.  e.  AD.  242-3). 

The  above  are  good  examples  of  the  composition  of  the 
Palmyrene  Aramaic  dialect.  Our  readers  will  perceive  that 
the  language  is  a  mixture  of  pure  Aramaic  with  Greek,  Latin, 
Arabic,  and  (in  the  case  of  proper  names  and  names  of 
months)  of  Babylonian.  Only  one  Persian  word  is  here;  but 
this  word  is  the  title  of  a  governmental  official  and  was  taken 
over  from  the  Sassanian  Persians  and  not  from  the  old  Achae- 
menids  of  Daniel's  time. 

Our  readers  will  please  notice  that  in  the  Palmyrene  we 
have  a  conglomerate  of  very  different  composition  from  that  in 
Daniel,  which,  as  we  saw  above,  is  composed  of  Aramaic,  He- 
brew, Old  Persian,  Babylonian  and  Greek  (3  words)  ;  whereas 
Palmyrene  is  composed  of  Aramaic,  Greek,  Arabic,  Latin, 
Babylonian  and  New  Persian  (one  word)  with  no  Hebrew. 

We  have  placed  the  names  of  the  languages  making  up  the 
two  dialects  in  the  order  of  their  relative  frequency  of  oc- 
currence. The  reader  may  make  his  own  conclusion  as  to 
whether  they  are  "  nearly  allied  ". 

d.  The  Targum  of  Jonathan.  What  we  have  said  above 
about  the  Targum  of  Onkelos  is  even  more  true  of  that  of 
Jonathan.  See  especially  Dalman's  Grammar  and  Levy's  Dic- 
tionary. 

D.  As  to  Dr.  Driver's  fourth  proposition,  that  the  Aramaic 
of  Daniel  is  "  that  which  was  spoken  in  or  near  Palestine  " 
and  "  at  a  date  after  the  conquest  of  Palestine  by  Alexander 
the  Great  ",  we  shall  address  our  remarks  first  to  the  statement 
that  such  a  dialect  was  spoken  near  Palestine,  and  we  shall 
begin  by  asking  when  was  it  spoken  near  Palestine  and  by 
whom.  The  only  evidence  we  have  is  ( i )  that  from  the  North 
Syrian  inscriptions,  but  this  language  is  not  like  that  of 
Daniel,  for  it  has  no  Persian,  no  Babylonian,  no  Greek;  (2) 
that  from  the  Nabateans,  but  we  know  that  they  were  an  Arab 
people  speaking  or  at  least  writing  Aramaic  and  that  of  a 
kind,  as  we  have  seen,  unlike  that  found  in  Daniel;  (3)  that 
from  the  Palmyrenes,  but  we  have  seen  that  the  language  of 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL  301 

the  Palmy renes  was  not  like  that  of  Daniel;  (4)  that  of  the 
Syrians,  but  their  earliest  document  goes  back  only  to  73  A.D. 
and  the  next  to  201  A.D. ;  besides,  as  is  well  known,  Syriac  is 
not  written  in  the  dialect  of  Daniel.  In  other  words,  there 
is  no  evidence,  that  any  dialect  resembling  Daniel's  was  ever 
spoken  by  anybody  near  Palestine. 

Nor  have  we  any  evidence  from  in  Palestine.  Dr.  Driver 
says  that  the  Targums  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan  received  their 
present  form  between  the  4th  and  6th  century  A.D.  Now  be- 
tween the  time  of  Ezra  which  he  places  in  Palestine  at  400 
B.C.  (probably  c.  400  B.C.,  LOT  p.  504)  and  that  of  the 
Targums,  what  evidence  can  be  produced  to  show  what  the 
people  living  in  Palestine  spoke?  There  are  no  Aramaic  in- 
scriptions from  Palestine  from  any  time.  The  other  Targums 
are  certainly  later  than  those  of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan.  Be- 
sides, if  anything  earlier  than  these  were  forthcoming,  we 
doubt  not  Dr.  Driver  would  have  produced  it.  Of  course,  there 
are  the  writings  of  the  Samaritans ;  but  in  the  first  place,  they 
are  not  written  in  a  dialect  resembling  that  of  Daniel,  and  sec- 
ondly, no  one  probably  would  contend  that  they  reached  their 
present  form  until  long  after  the  year  400  A.D. 

But  perhaps  by  near  Palestine,  Egypt  might  be  meant. 
Here,  however,  we  are  met  by  two  serious  objections  to  Dr. 
Driver's  proposition.  First,  the  latest  dated  document  from 
Egypt  is  from  the  year  400  B.C. ;  and  secondly,  the  Aramaic 
of  Egypt  differs  in  some  very  important  respects  from  that  of 
Daniel.  For  example,  it  has  no  Hophal,  nor  is  it  full  of 
Hebrew  common  words  as  Daniel  is.  Besides,  it  has  Egyp- 
tian words,  both  proper  and  common,  and  Daniel  has  neither. 

But,  perhaps,  Babylon  is  near  Palestine.  We  are  of  the 
opinion  that  it  is  near  enough  for  the  dialect  in  which  Daniel 
is  written  to  have  been  spoken  there.  This  provenience  and 
this  alone  would  in  our  opinion  suit  the  peculiarities  of  the 
dialect  of  the  book  of  Daniel.  This  would  account  for  the 
absence  of  Egyptian  words.  This  would  account  for  the 
Persian  and  Babylonian  and  Hebrew  elements  that  mix  in  with 
the  pure  Aramaic  to  form  this  dialect.  Then,  also,  150  years 
after  Sennacherib  had  conquered  the  Greeks  of  Cilicia,  thirty 
years  after  Nebuchadnezzar  had  conquered  the  Greek  mer- 


302 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 


cenaries  of  the  king  of  Egypt,  and  long  after  he  had  taken 
Greek  hirelings  into  his  own  service,  we  might  expect  to  find 
the  names  of  three  Greek  musical  instruments  in  the  language 
spoken  by  probably  the  major  part  of  his  subjects. 

But  how  about  the  Persian  words?  There  is  no  difficulty 
whatever  about  them.  The  children  of  Israel  had  been  settled 
in  the  cities  of  the  Medes  for  almost  200  years  before  Daniel 
is  supposed  to  have  been  written.  Some  of  these  Israelites  and 
many  of  the  Jews  were  settled  in  Assyria  and  Babylonia  where 
most  if  not  all  of  the  people  spoke  Aramaic.  Nineveh  and 
northern  Assyria  were  conquered  by  the  Medes  about  606 
B.C.  Here  were  seventy  years  before  Daniel  was  written  for 
Israelites  and  Jews  and  Arameans  to  adopt  Medo-Persian 
words.  All  the  witnesses  from  antiquity  unite  to  prove  that 
the  Medes  and  Persians  were  akin  and  spoke  dialects  of  the 
same  language.  The  Greeks  and  the  Hebrew  prophets  use 
their  names  at  times  interchangeably.  The  proper  names  of 
gods  and  persons  used  among  them  are  the  same,  or  similar. 
No  one  can  affirm  with  any  evidence  to  support  him  that  the 
words  in  Daniel  called  by  us  Persian  might  not  rather  be 
called  Median.  The  difficulty  arising  from  the  way  in  which 
the  author  of  Daniel  writes  a  few  of  the  sounds  is  more  than 
offset  by  the  fact  that  nowhere  else  than  in  Babylon  at  about 
the  year  500  B.C.  could  such  a  composite  Aramaic  as  that 
which  we  find  therein  have  been  written.  Grammar  and  vo- 
cabulary alike  can  be  best  accounted  for  by  supposing  that  the 
book  was  written  by  a  Jew  living  in  Babylon  at  about  that 
time,  that  is,  when  Aramaic  was  the  common  language  of  the 
world  of  commerce  and  diplomacy  and  social  intercourse,  when 
Babylonian  and  Medo-Persian  were  contending  for  the  uni- 
versal dominion  over  the  nations,  and  when  Greek  words  were 
just  beginning  to  appear  in  the  Lingua  Franca  of  international 
commerce. 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL  303 


Conclusion 

In  conclusion,  we  would  express  the  hope  that  we  have  been 
able  to  convince  our  readers  that  in  so  far  as  philology  is 
concerned  there  is  no  such  evidence  existing  as  Dr.  Driver 
alleges,  in  support  of  the  late  date  and  western  provenience  of 
the  book  of  Daniel.  The  evidence  for  the  early  date  derived 
from  the  orthography  is  not  as  convincing  in  the  case  of  every 
individual  letter  as  could  be  desired;  but  taken  as  a  whole,  it 
is  in  favor  of  an  early  rather  than  of  a  late  date.  The  evi- 
dence derived  from  forms  and  inflections  and  syntax  is  de- 
cidedly, and  that  from  the  vocabulary  is  overwhelmingly,  in 
favor  of  an  early  date  and  of  an  eastern  provenience.  What 
may  be  called  the  pure  Aramaic  matrix  of  this  unique  con- 
glomerate, which  we  call  the  dialect  of  Daniel,  presents  evi- 
dence in  the  words  that  it  used  to  express  the  most  common 
ideas  that  it  differed  materially  from  the  dialects  with  which 
Dr.  Driver  affirms  that  it  was  "  nearly  allied  ".  These  same 
words  show  that  a  close  relationship  existed  between  it  and 
the  dialect  of  Egypto- Aramaic  of  the  5th  century  B.C.,  and 
also  a  remarkable  agreement  with  the  Syriac  and  Mandean, 
among  the  most  eastern  of  all  the  dialects.  So  that  the  evi- 
dence of  the  strictly  Aramaic  vocabulary  of  the  dialect  of 
Daniel  is  predominantly  in  favor  of  the  early  date  and  of  the 
eastern  provenience. 

But,  it  is  when  we  consider  the  foreign  elements  in  the 
language,  that  we  must  be  convinced  that  the  evidence  for 
the  composition  of  the  book  at  or  near  Babylon  at  some 
time  not  far  removed  from  the  founding  of  the  Persian 
empire  is  simply  overwhelming.  At  no  other  time  could 
such  a  conglomerate  have  been  composed.  The  nearest 
dialects  to  it  in  variety  and  kind  of  commingling  elements  are 
those  of  Ezra  and  of  the  Egyptian  papyri,  both  from  the  5th 
century  B.C.  At  a  time  later  than  this,  there  is  no  evidence 
that  any  such  dialect  was  in  use.  At  a  place  far  removed 
from  Babylon,  a  composition  of  such  heterogeneous  elements 
could  never  have  been  produced.  For  there  never  has  been  a 
time  and  place  known  to  history  save  Babylon  in  the  latter 


304 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 


half  of  the  6th  century  B.C.,  in  which  an  Aramaic  dialect  with 
just  such  an  admixture  of  foreign  ingredients  and  in  just 
such  proportions  could  have  been  brought  into  existence.  For, 
it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  that  the  place  and  time  of  all  the 
Aramaic  dialects  can  be  determined  approximately  by  the 
kinds  and  proportions  of  extraneous  elements  contained  in 
them.  Thus  the  Zakir  inscription  of  850  B.C.  has  no  foreign 
elements,  except  perhaps  Hebrew.  The  Sendshirli  inscriptions 
of  the  latter  part  of  the  8th  century  B.C.  have  Assyrian  in- 
gredients. The, Egypto- Aramaic  of  the  5th  century  B.C.  has 
Persian,  Babylonian,  Hebrew,  and  Egyptian  terms,  and  perhaps 
one  Latin  and  three  Greek  words.  Ezra  has  Persian,  Babylon- 
ian and  Hebrew.  The  Nabatean  has  Arabic  in  large  measure, 
one  Babylonian  word  and  a  few  Greek  ones.  The  Palmyrene 
has  Greek  predominantly,  some  Arabic,  and  two  Sassanian, 
or  late  Persian  words.  The  Targum  of  Onkelos  has  mainly 
Greek  words,  (two  of  which  have  been  verbalized  after  Ara- 
maic forms),  five  Persian  words,  and  some  Hebrew  and 
Babylonian  elements.  The  Targum  of  Jonathan  has  yet  more 
Greek  nouns  and  three  verbs  likewise  Aramaic  in  form  derived 
from  Greek  nouns,  at  least  one  Latin  word,  apparently  no 
Persian  words,  and  only  one  Babylonian  word  or  form,  except 
such  as  are  found  in  the  Scriptures,  and  a  considerable  number 
of  Hebrew  words.  The  Syriac  (Edessene)  has  hundreds  of 
Greek  words,  a  considerable  number  of  which  are  verbalized ; 
scores  of  Latin  words;  many  Hebrew  words,  a  few  of  them 
verbalized;  a  few  Babylonian  words  and  forms;  many  late 
Persian  nouns,  perhaps  none  of  which  are  verbalized;  a  little 
Sanskrit,  and  in  later  works  many  Arabic  nouns,  especially 
names  of  persons  and  places.  In  New  Syriac  the  foreign  ele- 
ments are  predominantly  Turkish,  Arabic  and  Kurdish  loan 
Words. 

Therefore,  it  being  thus  apparent  that  on  the  basis  of 
foreign  elements  imbedded  in  Aramaic  dialects,  it  is  possible 
for  the  scholar  to  fix  approximately  the  time  and  the  locality 
in  which  the  different  dialects  were  spoken;  all  the  more 
when  as  has  been  shown  in  the  case  of  Daniel  such  a  date  and 
locality  are  required  by  the  vocabulary  of  the  pure  Aramaic 
substratum  and  favored  or  at  least  permitted  by  its  grammati- 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF   DANIEL  305 

cal  forms  and  structure,  we  are  abundantly  justified  in  conclud- 
ing that  the  dialect  of  Daniel  containing,  as  it  does,  so  many 
Persian,  Hebrew,  and  Babylonian  elements,  and  so  few  Greek 
words,  with  not  one  Egyptian,  Latin  or  Arabic  word,  and 
so  nearly  allied  in  grammatical  form  and  structure  to  the 
older  Aramaic  dialects  and  in  its  conglomerate  vocabulary 
to  the  dialects  of  Ezra  and  Egypto-Aramaic,  must  have  been 
used  at  or  near  Babylon  at  a  time  not  long  after  the  founding 
of  the  Persian  empire. 


3o6 


THE  ARAMAIC  OF  DANIEL 


APPENDIX. 

The  verbal  forms  used  by  the  Arameans  may  be  denoted  to  the  eye  by 
three  tables,  giving  the  forms  used  between  900  and  400  B.  C,  between 
400  B.  C.  and  700  A.  D.,  and  by  the  writers  of  Daniel  and  Ezra  and  the 
dialects  of  the  Nabateans  and  Palmyrenes  respectively. 

Table    I. 
Sendshirli 
Zakir  &  Nerab         Eg.-Aramaic 


Peal 

Peal 

Peal 

Paal  (?) 
Hafal 

Paal  (?) 
Hafal 

Paal 
Hafal 

Ethpeel  . 

Ethpeel 

•~ 

Hafal  (?) 

Ethpaal 

Peil 

Peil 
Shafel 

Tabtf  II. 

Trg.  Onkelos 

.  Trg.  Jno. 

Syriac 

Sam. 

Mandean 

Peal 

Peal 

Peal 

Peal 

Peal 

Paal 

Paal 

Paal 

Pail 

Pail 

Afal 

Afal 

Afal 

Afal 

Afel 

Ethpeel 

Ethpeel 

Ethpeel 

Ethpeel 

Hafel 

Ethpaal 

Ethpaal 

Ethpaal 

Ethpaal 

Shafel 

Ittafal 

Ittafal 

Ettafal 

Ittafal 

Safel 

Pael 

Ishtafal 

Shafel 

Nifal 

Ethpeel 

Pad 

Pael 

Safel 

Pual  (?) 

Ethpael 

Palel 

Palel 

Ethpauel  (?) 

Hafal'  (?) 

Ettafal 

Palpel 

Palpel 
Palel 

Palpel 
Ethpaulel  (?) 

Peil  I 

Eshtafal 

Hofal  I  (?) 

Ithpalpel 
Hofal  I  (?) 

Paid  (?) 
Eshtafal 

Table  III. 

Daniel 

Ezra 

Nabatean 

Palmyrean 

Peal 

Peal 

Peal 

Peal 

Paal 

Afel 

Paal 

Paal 

Hafel 

Afel 

Paal 

Paal 

Afel 

Hafel 

Afel 

Afel 

Shafel  I 

Shafel  2 

Hafel 

Ethpeel 

Ethpeel 

Shafel  I 

Ethpaal 

Ethpaal 

Ethpeel 

Ethpeel 

Palel  I 

Pail 
Hafal  I 

Ethpaal 
Peil  I 

Ethpaal 

Hofal  9 

Hishtafal  i 

Hithpolel  I 

Hithpoal  I 

Peil 

Peil 

THE  PLACE  OF  THE  RESURRECTION 
APPEARANCES  OF  JESUS 

William  Park  Armstrong 


Introduction:    Faith,  fact,  and  method;  the  witness  of  the  New  Testament; 
later  tradition. 

I.     The  Galilean  Theory. 

Strauss;    Weizsacker;    Wernle;    P.    W.    Schmiedel;    Harnack; 

Rohrbach;  W.  Bruckner;  Volter;  Wellhausen ;  Kreyenbiihl. 
II.     The  Jerusalem  Theory. 

Loofs;  Galilee  on  the  Mount  of  Olives  (Hofmann,  Resch,  etc.). 
III.     The  Double  Tradition. 

Von  Dobschiitz ;  T.  S.  Rordam ;  Lyder  Brun ;  Riggenbach ;  Zahn ; 

Voigt;  constructive  results;  critical  principles. 
Appendix:    Extra-canonical  tradition — Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews; 

Gospel  of  Peter;  a  Coptic  Document;  the  Syriac  Didascalia;  Ter- 

tullian's  Apologeticum  xxi;  Acta  Pilati.     Abbreviations. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  RESURRECTION 
APPEARANCES  OF  JESUS 

The  early  Christian  community  in  Jerusalem  believed  that 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who  had  been  crucified  under  Pontius  Pil- 
ate, was  the  Messiah.  This  belief  according  to  the  earliest 
tradition  had  its  origin  in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  himself, 
for  he  both  accepted  the  expression  of  it  from  others^  and 
gave  explicit  witness  to  it  by  his  own  words^  and  actions.' 
It  was  shared  by  his  disciples.  Through  his  death  an  element 
quite  incongruous  with  their  expectations  was  introduced  into 
it.*  Yet  the  belief  persisted  and  became  a  world-historic  force. 
In  the  earliest  form  of  which  we  have  knowledge, — that  is,  of 
the  faith  of  the  primitive  Christian  community — it  included 
two  distinctive  features: — the  death  and  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus.  There  are  clear  indications  in  the  Gospels  that  both 
of  these  elements  entered  into  Jesus'  conception  of  his  Mes- 
siahshipf  but  even  if  these  indications  be  regarded  merely  as 
reflections  of  early  Christian  faith  they  imply  by  contrast  a 

*Mit.  xvi.  i6;  Mk.  viii.  29;  Lk.  ix.  20. 

'Especially  in  the  self-designation  "Son  of  Man";  cf.  Holtzmann,  Das 
mess.  Bewusstsein  Jesu,  1907;  Lehrbuch  d,  neutest.  Theologie^  i,  191 1, 
pp.  295  ff, ;  Pfleiderer  Das  Urchristentum*  usw.  i,  1902,  pp.  660  ff.  Tillmann, 
Der  Menschensohn,  BSt.  xii.  1-2,  1907 ;  Schlatter,  Der  Zweifel  an  der  Mes- 
sianitdt  Jesu,  BFTh.  xi.  4,  1907;  E.  Klostermann,  Markus,  HB.  ii.  1907, 
pp.  67  f . ;  B.  B.  Warfield,  The  Lord  of  Glory,  1907,  pp.  23  ff,,  etc. 

'  Mt.  xxi.  I  ff ;  Mk.  xi.  i  ff ;  Lk.  xix.  29  ff. 

*Mk.  viii.  32,  ix.  10,  32,  x.  35  ff.,  xiv.  27  ff.,  51;  Lk.  xxiv.  21; 
cf .  I  Cor.  i.  23 ;  Gal.  vi.  I2ff ;  on  the  idea  of  a  suffering  Messiah  in  Judaism 
cf.  Bousset,  Religion  d.  Judentum^,  1906,  p.  265;  Schurer,  Gesch.  d.  jud. 
Volkes*  usw.  ii,  1907,  pp.  648  ff.;  J.  Weiss,  SNT.^  i,  1907,  pp.  148  ff.; 
Schweitzer,  Von  Reimarus  zu  Wrede,  1906,  pp.  368  f.,  383  ff. ;  Volz,  Jiidische 
Eschatologie  usw,  1903,  p.  237;  Bertholet,  Biblische  Theologie  d.  Alien 
Testaments,  ii.  191 1,  p.  450. 

"  Mk.  viii.  30  f,  etc. 


310 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


change  in  the  content  of  faith  which  was  not  without  a  cause. 
And  if  this  cause  be  not,  or  not  alone,  in  the  consciousness  of 
Jesus  and  his  teaching,  it  must  be  sought  in  the  experience  of 
the  disciples  subsequent  to  his  death.  How  then  did  the  faith 
in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  which  embraced  his  death  and  resur- 
rection, emerge  in  the  consciousness  of  the  disciples?  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  did  emerge  and  that  it  did  contain  these 
elements.  This  is  proven  by  the  testimony  of  Paul.*  Con- 
verted to  this  faith  within  a  few  years  after  Jesus'  death,  he 
not  only  shared  it  from  the  beginning  of  his  missionary  ac- 
tivity,*^ but  in  it  knew  himself  to  be  in  full  accord  with  the 
early  Christian  community  in  Jerusalem.®  There  is  no  trace 
of  any  difference  of  opinion  on  this  subject.®  The  difficulties 
in  Corinth  about  the  resurrection  concerned  not  Jesus  but  be- 
lievers.^^   There  is  every  reason  to  think  that  it  had  its  origin 

•  I  Cor.  XV.  2-8:  irapiSuKa  yhp  itfuv  iv  irpdrrots,  6  Kal  irapAa/Sov,  &ri  XpurrSs  airidavtv 
inrkp  rdv  ifxapriuv  i^fx(av  Karh.  rdj  ypa<f>ds,  Kal  &n  irdtpr),  Kai  8ti  iyi^eprai  ry  rjfUpg. 
Tji  TplT-g  Kard,  tAj  ypa<f)di^  Kal  &n  ixpOr)  Krf <f>qi^  elra  roTs  SibdcKa-  tlireira  &<p6r)  iirdvu) 
xevraKOffloii  dSe\<poK  iipdira^,  i^  dv  ol  irXeloves  fiivovaiv  ius  Apri^  rivis  dk  iKoiix-fjdtiaav 
^TttTo  &<l>dri  'laKti^tfi,  elra  rotj  diro<rT6'\ois  irdaiv  ^<rx«iToi'  5^  irdvrwv  ixrirepel  ry  iKxpti)- 
fiari  &<p0ri  KdfMl. 

'It  appears  definitely  in  his  fcarliest  Epistle  (i  Thess.  i.  lo,  iv.  14); 
and  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  so  fundamental  an  element  in  his 
thought  could  have  been  absent  prior  to  this  and  the  fact  of  its  subse- 
quent introduction  have  left  no  trace  in  his  Epistles.  The  character  of 
his  pre-Christian  activity  (Gal.  i.  14,  24;  i  Cor.  xv,  9),  the  manner  of 
his  conversion  (Gal.  i.  16,  cf.  i.  2;  i  Cor.  ix.  i,  xv.  8;  cf.  Acts  ix.  3  ff. ; 
xxii.  6  ff. ;  xxvi.  12  ff.)  and  the  close  association  of  the  resurrection  and 
the  exaltation  of  Jesus  (Rom.  i.  4;  viii.  34)  require  the  presence  of  this 
element  in  Paul's  faith  from  its  inception. 

•  I  Cor.  XV.  I  ff. ;  Gal.  i.  18  f . 

•As  there  was  about  other  matters  touching  the  relation  of  the  Gentile 
Christians  to  the  ceremonial  law;  cf.  the  significant  statement  of  Weiz- 
sacker  (Das  apostolische  Zeitalter  der  christlichen  Kirche^,  1892,  pp.  i6f) 
in  regard  to  the  fundamental  agreement  of  Paul  and  the  early  Church 
in  the  christology  which  grew  out  of  the  common  belief  in  the  resur- 
rection; cf.  also  F.  Dibelius,  Das  Abendmahl,  191 1,  pp.  i  ff. 

"Paul's  argument  for  the  resurrection  of  believers  in  i  Cor.  xv.  is 
based  upon  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  as  a  premise  of  fact  about  which 
all  were  agreed.  Kirsopp  Lake  says  (The  Earlier  Epistles  of  St.  Paul, 
191 1,  pp.  215  f)  ;  "  It  is  clear  from  i  Cor.  xv.  that  there  was  a  party  at  Cor- 
inth which  denied  that  there  would  ever  be  a  resurrection  of  the  dead.  It 
is  also  plain  that  there  was  nevertheless  no  dispute  as  to  the  resurrection  of 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  311 

on  the  third  day  after  Jesus'  death, — on  the  first  Easter  Sun- 
day, when  the  sepulchre  of  Jesus  was  found  empty ^^  and 
Jesus  appeared  to  Peter  and  to  others. 

In  the  earhest  documentary  evidence  Jesus  himself  is  rep- 
resented as  the  cause  of  this  faith.  His  death  was  a  well  ac- 
credited fact.  Belief  in  his  resurrection  is  attributed  to  the 
self -manifestations  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples  and  others  by 
which  he  convinced  them  of  his  triumph  over  death;  and 
this  in  turn  gave  to  the  empty  tomb — a  fact  of  their  experi- 
ence^^—  its  true  explanation. 

The  New  Testament  accounts  of  the  self -manifestations  or 
appearances  of  Jesus  constitute  an  important  element  in  the  ex- 
Christ,  for  the  whole  argument  of  St.  Paul  is  based  on  the  fact  that  there 
was  a  general  consent  on  that  subject.  It  has  sometimes  been  thought 
that  this  implies  that  the  Corinthians  had  no  hope  of  any  future  life  be- 
yond death.  But  this  view  is  an  unjustified  conclusion  from  i  Cor.  xv. 
17-19.  St.  Paul  is  here  arguing  that  there  must  be  a  resurrection,  because 
a  future  life  is  impossible  without  one,  and  that  the  hope  of  the  Chris- 
tian to  share  in  the  life  of  Christ  necessitates  that  he  should  rise  from 
the  dead  just  as  Christ  did.  Moreover,  the  idea  that  there  was  no  future 
life  is  as  wholly  foreign  to  the  point  of  view  of  the  "Mystery  Religions" 
of  the  Corinthian  world,  as  it  was  to  that  of  Jewish  theology.  The  ques- 
tion was  not  whether  there  would  be  a  future  life,  but  whether  a  future 
life  must  be  attained  by  means  of  a  resurrection,  and  St.  Paul's  argument 
is  that  in  the  first  place  the  past  resurrection  of  Christ  is  positive  evidence 
for  the  future  resurrection  of  Christians,  and  in  the  second  place  that 
the  conception  of  a  resurrection  is  central  and  essential  in  Christianity, 
which  offers  no  hope  of  a  future  life  for  the  dead  apart  from  a  resur- 
rection." Cf.  also  Lake's  estimate  of  the  significance  to  be  attached  to 
the  elements  of  Christian  faith  held  in  common  by  Paul  and  his  readers 
and  therefore  presupposed  in  his  Epistles,  ibid.,  pp.  115,  132  f.,  233  n.,  277, 
424,  437,  and  Exp.  1909,  i,  p.  506. 

"This  is  witnessed  by  all  the  Gospels  and  is  implied  in  i  Cor.  xv.  3  f. 
by  the  close  association  of  the  burial  and  the  resurrection  on  the  third 
day.  It  was  thus  part  of  the  primitive  apostolic  tradition.  On  the 
recent  discussion  of  the  empty  tomb  cf.  A.  Meyer,  Die  Auferstehung 
Christi  usw.  1905,  pp.  io6ff;  K.  Lake,  The  Historical  Evidence  for  the 
Resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ,  1907,  pp.  240  ff. ;  H.  J.  Holtzmann,  ThR. 
1906,  pp.  79  ff.,  119  ff-,  ThLz.  1908,  pp.  262  f.;  P.  W.  Schmiedel,  PrM.  1908, 
pp.  I2ff;  Korff,  Die  Auferstehung  Christi  usw.  1908,  pp.  I42ff;  W.  H. 
Ryder,  HThR.  1909,  pp.  i  ff.;  C.  R.  Bowen,  The  Resurrection  in  the  New 
Testament,  191 1,  pp.  204  ff. 

"  Cf.  Lk.  xxiv.  23 ;  Jno.  xx.  3  ff. 


312 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


planation  which  the  early  Christians  gave  of  an  essential  fea- 
ture of  their  faith.  If  these  accounts  are  trustworthy,  there 
can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  concerning  the  ground  upon  which 
the  primitive  faith  in  the  resurrection  rested.  Undoubtedly 
they  reflect  the  belief  of  the  early  Christians.  But  are  they 
for  this  reason  or  because  of  their  contents  and  mutual  rela- 
tions witnesses  only  to  faith  and  not  to  fact?  Historical 
criticism,  it  is  true,  is  concerned  primarily  with  the  narratives, 
— their  exact  content,  mutual  and  genetic  relations,  and  their 
value;  but  the  final  judgment  which  it  must-render  concerning 
the  truthfulness  of  the  narratives,  their  correspondence  with 
reality, — involving  as  this  does  the  idea  of  causation — cannot 
be  made  apart  from  a  general  world-view  or  ultimate  philo- 
sophical theory.  ^^  And  since  the  end  of  the  process  may  be 
first  in  thought,  the  process  itself  will  sometimes  disclose  the 
influence  of  theoretical  considerations. 

In  considering  the  relation  of  early  Christian  belief  to  his- 
torical fact,  ^  critical  investigation  enters  upon  a  historico- 
genetic  analysis  of  the  documentary  evidence  in  which  search 
is  made  in  the  details  of  the  different  narratives  for  traces  of 
the  stages  through  which  the  final  result, — i.  e.  the  belief  whose 
origin  the  narratives  professedly  set  forth — was  attained. 
Among  the  details  which  may  be  expected  to  throw  light  on 
this  process  the  indications  of  place  or  locality  in  the  narra- 
tives of  the  appearances  are  not  only  important  in  themselves 
but  have,  since  the  time  of  Reimarus,  Lessing,  and  Strauss, 
held  a  central  place  in  modern  discussion  of  the  subject. 

The  witness  of  the  New  Testament  to  the  place  of  the  ap- 
pearances is  in  general  quite  plain.  In  the  list  of  appearances 
which  Paul  gives  in  i  Cor.  xv.  5-8  no  mention  is  made  of 

"On  this  aspect  of  historical  criticism  cf.  PrTliR.  1910,  pp.  247  ff. ; 
Kiefl,  Der  geschichtliche  Christus  und  die  moderne  Philosophie,  191 1; 
and  the  discussions  of  the  "  religious  a  priori "  by  Bousset,  ThR.  1909, 
pp.  419  ff.,  471  ff.  (cf.  ZThK.  1910,  pp.  341  ff.;  1911,  pp.  141  ff.)  ;  Dunkmann, 
Das  religiose  Apriori  und  die  Geschichte,  BFTh.  xiv.  3,  1910;  Wobbermin, 
ZThK.  191 1,  Ergdnsungsheft  2 ;  Troeltsch,  RGG.  ii.  pp.  1437  ff.,  1447  ff. ;  Die 
Bedeutung  der  Geschichtlichkeit  Jesu  fiir  den  Glauben,  191 1;  Mackin- 
tosh, Exp.  191 1,  i.  pp.  434  ff.;  Beth,  ThR.  1912,  pp.  i  ff.;  also  C.  H.  Weisse, 
Evangclische  Geschichte,  ii.  1838,  pp.  441  ff. 


THE   RESURRECTION    APPEARANCES  313 

place,  although  the  Apostle  incidentally  alludes  elsewhere  to 
the  place  of  one  of  them  in  a  manner  which  presupposes  knowl- 
edge of  it.^*  In  Mt.  xxviii  two  appearances  are  narrated, — 
one  to  certain  women  in  Jerusalem  on  Easter  Sunday,  ^^  and 
one  at  a  later  time  to  the  disciples  in  Galilee. ^^  Mark  in  its 
earliest  transmitted  form  ends  abruptly  at  xvi.  8  without  men- 
tion of  an  appearance;  but  the  message  of  the  young  man  at 
the  sepulchre  gives  promise  of  an  appearance  in  Galilee. ^'^  Lk. 
xxiv  records  at  least  two  appearances, — one  to  Cleopas  and 
his  companion  at  Emmaus,^^  and  one  to  the  disciples  in  Jeru- 
salem on  the  evening  of  Easter  Sunday^^ — allusion  being  made 
also  to  a  third,  the  appearance  to  Peter  on  Easter  Sunday  and 
by  necessary  implication  in  or  near  Jerusalem. ^^  Jno.  xx  re- 
lates an  appearance  to  Mary  Magdalene  at  the  sepulchre,^!  an 
appearance  to  the  disciples — Thomas  being  absent — on  Easter 
Sunday  and  in  Jerusalem,^^  and  an  appearance  to  the  disciples 
again — Thomas  being  present' — a  week  later  and  most  prob- 
ably in  Jerusalem.  23     Jno.   xxi  describes  an  appearance  to 

"Gal.  i.  15  f.  and  17  {kuI  irdXip  viri<rTe\J/a  els  Aa/ma-KSv). 

'^  xxviii.  9-10.  Kal  iSoii  'Irjaovs  inr-fivTriaev  airah  \iyiov  xa^/>ere.  al  8k  irpoffeXdowrai 
4Kp6t,T7]<Ta,v  aiiTov  roifs  ir68as  Kal  irpoffeKivn^cav  awry,  r&re  \^-yei  airrah  6  'It/o-oOs  fx-ff  <f>o- 
^eurde-  vtrdyere  dirayyelXare  rots  &5e\<poK  fwv  tva  dir^Xdunnv  e/j  rijv  FaXiXalay,  KdKei  fjue 
iypovrai. 

^*  xxviii.  16-20 :  oL  5k  USeKa  fiadrjTal  iiropeiidTia-av  els  r^v  TaXiXalap,  els  rb  6pos  oH 
ird^aro  airrois  6  'Itjffovs,  Kal  IdSvres  avrbv  irpwreKivijaav,  ol  8k  i8laTa<Tav.  Kal  trpoaeXdiiv 
6  'I77<ro0s  iXdXrjaev  avrois  Xiycjp  i86dTf  fjuoi  irdtra  i^ovala  ktX. 

^''  xvi.  7 :  dXXd  vTrdyere  etirare  rots  fiadifrais  avroO  Kal  rip  H^rpfp  &n  wpodyei  v/xds 
els  rijv  TaXiXaiav  kKel  airrbv  6\f/eade,  Ka6<bs  elwev  vp.iv  (cf.  Mk.  xiv.  28). 

^^  xxiv.  13-35  •  '^"^  '^<>^  ^^^  ^^  avTuv  airr^  ry  vfiipg,  Tjaav  wopevbfievoL  els  K(A>p.rjv  dv- 
^X0V<rav  a-Ta8lovs  e^Kopra  dvb  'lepovaaX-^fx,  y  6vofxa  'Efx/mo^s,  Kal  airol  ufiCXovv  irpbs 
dXXiJXous  Trepi  irdvroiv  tQv  <Tvp.^e^riK&rb3v  roiruiv.  Kal  kyivero  ip  rip  bfiiXeiv  a&roi>s  kuI 
4rvp^riTeTp,  Kal  airrbs  'Irja-ovs  iyylaas  ffwetropeiero  avrois  ktX. 

**  xxiv.  36  ff . :  ravra  8k  airruip  XaXodprup  avrbs  e<XT7]  ip  fiiffip  avrQp  ktX. 

^  xxiv.  33^f .  :  Kal  elpop  iidpoiapApovs  roi/s  ^p8eKa  Kal  Toi>s  tri/p  airoTs,  Xiyopras  8ti 
6pt(i)s  iiyipdT}  6  Kipios  Kal  HxpdTj  2,ifuapi. 

2^  XX.  11-18 :  Mapla  8k  eWrifKei  irpbs  rQ  fiprj/Miip  e^w  KXalovtra  ....  i<TTpd<prj  els  rd 
(Jtt/o-w,  Kal  Beupei  rbp  '1t)<tovp  iffrwra  ktX. 

'2  XX.  19-23  [24]  ;  oijcTTis  odp  6\J/Las  ry  Tjixipq.  iKelpji  ry  fu$  aa^^druip  .  .  .  '^XOep  6 
*Irj<rovs  Kal  Iottj  els  rb  pAaov  .  .  .  9a>/xaj  5^  els  iK  ruip  8ib8eKa  .  .  .  ovk  fjv  /xer  avru>p  8re 
^Xdep  'Iri<rovs. 

*'  XX.  26-29  :  Kal  p£d'  ripApas  OKrCi  irdXip  fjoav  eata  oi  fiadrjral  airrov,  Kal  Qufids  p.er 
aOrwj'.  ^px^rai  6  'Itjitovs  ktX. 


3H 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


seven  disciples  by  the  Sea  of  Tiberias  in  Galilee.^*  Acts  states 
that  the  period  during  which  Jesus  appeared  to  his  disciples 
extended  over  forty  days,^'^  and  records  words  of  Paul  which 
point  to  Jerusalem  as  the  scene  of  the  appearances. ^^ 

The  most  natural  interpretation  of  this  evidence  in  its  en- 
tirety favors  the  view  that  there  were  appearances  first  in  or 
near  Jerusalem,  then  in  Galilee,  and  finally  in  or  near  Jerusa- 
lem,— neglecting  for  the  purpose  of  this  discussion  the  place  of 
the  appearance  to  Paul, 

Tradition  late^r  than  the  New  Testament  yields  little  or 
nothing  of  a  trustworthy  character.  Of  the  endings  which 
have  been  added  to  Mark,  the  longer^^  is  composite  in  form, 
dependent  on  Luke  and  John,^®  and  mentions  appearances  in 
or  near  Jerusalem — to  Mary  Magdalene,  to  two  walking  in 
the  country,  and  to  the  Eleven.  This  ending  must  have  been 
added  to  the  Gospel  in  the  second  century, — probably  before 
the  middle  of  the  century  and  in  Asia  Minor. ^^  The  short 
ending^^  is  still  later.  It  reports  in  a  summary  manner  the 
delivery  by  the  women  of  the  message  of  the  young  man  to 
"  those  about   Peter ",   and  then   records   an  appearance   in 

'*  xxi.  I  f f . :  /*€t4  Tavra  itpaviponrep  iavrbv  rrdXiv  'lvf<rovs  rots  fMdrjrais  iirl  rrjs  daXdcffrff 
Tffi  Ti^epidSos  kt\. 

**  i.  3 :  oTj  Kal  irapiaTr]<r€v  iavrbv  ^Cjvra  /xerd  rb  tradeiv  airrbv  iv  iroXXots  r€KfJi.r}plotSf  5i' 
ilfjxpuv  TCffffepdKOPra  drTavbfievos  airoh. 

"•xiii.  31 :  ^s  &<f>dT]  ivl  iifi^pas  irXelovs  rots  avvavaftouTip  adry  dvb  rijs  TaXiKalas  elt 
'\epovaa\-fiti  kt\.  cf .  X.  40  :  tovtov  6  debs  ifyeipep  iv  r^  rplTTj  rifjuipq.  Kal  i^duKev  airrbv 
ifjupavrj  yep^ffOai^  ov  travrl  Tip  Xa(J5,  dXXA  pAprvpaiv  rots  •n-poKexeiporomj/Mipois  inrb  rod 
deoCj  ijfuVf  otrives  <rvve<f>dyop.€P  Kal  avpeirlofiep  aiiri^  pjerd  rb  dpa<TTrjpa>.  airrop  iK  PCKpCip. 

"  xvi.  9-20  :  dpaa-rds  5k  trput  frpiirrxi  aa^^drov  i<f>dpT]  irpGrrop  MapU/.  ry  MaybaXriyy 
.  .  .  ixerd  Si  ravra  bvalp  i^  avrup  TrepiiraTovaiv  i<f>aP€p<Jbdri  ip  iripq,  fiop<py  iropevofUpoir 
els  dypbp  .  .  .  ij<rTepop  dk  dpaKeipApois  airrois  toTs  ^pdcKa  i<f>apep<»>6r)  kt\. 

"xvi.  9 — Jno.  XX.  I,  14-17,  Lk.  viii.  2;  xvi.  10— Lk.  xxiv.  11;  xvi.  12 — 
Lk.  xxiv.  12-31;  xvi.  14— Lk.  xxiv.  41  flf. ;  xvi.  15— Lk.  xxiv.  47;  Mt. 
xxviii.  19;  cf.  Zahn,  Einleitung^,  ii.  1907,  pp.  234,  244  f. ;  E.  Klostermann, 
Markus,  HB.  ii.  pp.  147  f.;  Wohlenberg,  Evang.  d.  Markus,  ZK.  ii.  1910, 
pp.  386  ff. 

"  Cf.  Zahn,  Gesch.  d,  nt.  Kanons,  ii.  pp.  910  ff. ;  Einleitung,  ii.  pp. 
232  ff. ;  Westcott  and  Hort,  The  New  Testament  in  Greek,  1882,  ii,  Appen- 
dix, pp.  29  ff. ;  Swete,  The  Gospel  according  to  St.  Mark,  1898,  pp.  xcvi.  ff. 

"*  Udpra  5k  rd  irapv/yyeXfiipa  rois  trepl  rbp  H^rpop  (rvvrbpuus  i^-ff^yeCKav.  MerA  8k 
ravra  Kol  airrbs  6  'IrjiroOs  dvb  dvoroX^j  Kal  &yj».  8iJ<rcw$  ^|dir^<rT«X6»'  5i  a&rwp  rb  lepbv 
Kal  &<p6apT0P  K-fipvypja  ttjs  aiuplov  (ruyrriplas. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  315 

which  Jesus  sends  forth  through  them — i.  e.  those  about 
Peter — "  the  holy  and  incorruptible  preaching  of  eternal  salva- 
tion ".  No  mention  is  made  of  the  place  or  the  time  but  it  is 
natural  to  infer  from  the  preceding  context,  which  this  end- 
ing was  intended  to  supplement  and  complete,  that  the  place 
was  Jerusalem  and  the  time  Easter  Sunday.  A  quotation 
from  the  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews^^  (2nd  century) 
tell  of  an  appearance  to  James,  the  brother  of  the  Lord,  and 
to  others, — probably  in  Jerusalem. — but  its  description  of  the 
attendant  circumstances  is  plainly  secondary.  The  Gospel  of 
Peter^^  (2nd  century)  is  dependent  on  the  canonical  Gospels 
and  distinctly  secondary  in  its  account  of  the  resurrection.  It 
does  not  record  an  appearance  to  the  women  or  to  the  disciples, 
but  seems  on  the  point  of  narrating  an  incident  not  unlike  the 
appearance  to  the  seven  by  the  Sea  of  Tiberias^^  when  the  frag- 
ment ends  abruptly.  Its  most  distinctive  feature  is  the  de- 
scription of  the  return  of  the  disciples  to  Galilee  at  the  end  of 
the  feast  in  sorrow,  apparently  without  knowledge  either  of  the 
experience  of  the  women  at  the  sepulchre  as  recorded  in  the 
canonical  Gospels  or  of  the  resurrection.  A  Coptic  document*^* 
(4th  or  5th  century,  but  thought  to  embody  a  second  century 
narrative^^)  contains  in  fragmentary  form  an  account  of  an 
appearance  to  Mary,  Martha  and  Mary  Magdalene  at  the 
sepulchre  and  then  to  the  disciples, — by  plain  implication,  in 
Jerusalem.  The  Syriac  Didascalia^^  (4th  century)  records  an 
appearance  to  Mary  Magdalene  and  Mary,  the  daughter  of 
James,  then  an  appearance  in  the  house  of  Levi,  and  finally 
an  appearance  to  us   (i.  e.  the  disciples), — certainly  at  first 

^  Hieronymus,  Liber  de  viris  inlustribus,  in  Gebhardt  u.  Harnack,  TU. 
xiv.  1896,  p.  8;  cf.  Appendix,  p.  351,  I. 

^Cf.  Appendix,  p.  351,  II. 

''Jno.  xxi.  I  ff. 

^C.  Schmidt,  SAB.  1895,  pp.  705-711;  Harnack,  Theologische  Studien 
B.  Weiss  dargehracht,  1897,  PP-  1-8,  cf.  Appendix,  p.  352,  III. 

^  Schmidt  Ibid.;  Harnack  Ibid.;  cf.  Ehrhard,  Die  altchrist.  Literatur 
und  ihre  Erforschung  von  1884-1900,  in  Strassburger  Theologische  Stu- 
dien, igcKj,  p.  146. 

"Achelis  und  Flemming,  in  Gebhardt  u.  Harnack,  TU.  NF.  x.  1904, 
cap.  xxi ;  cf.  Hennecke,  Neutest.  Apokryphen,  1904,  pp.  292  flf. ;  Preuschen, 
Antilegomena^,  1905,  p.  81 ;  and  Appendix,  pp.  352  f.,  IV. 


3i6  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

near  Jerusalem  and  subsequently  in  the  place  where  this  docu- 
ment located  the  house  of  Levi,  probably  in  Jerusalem.  Ter- 
tullian^''  speaks  of  appearances  in  Galilee  in  Judea ;  the  Acts  of 
Pilate*®  (4th  century)  of  an  appearance  to  Joseph  of  Arima- 
thea  in  Jerusalem  and  to  the  disciples  on  the  Mount  of  Olives 
in  Galilee. 

No  theory  of  the  place  of  the  appearances  can  be  based 
solely  on  the  extra-canonical  tradition.  Appeal  is  generally 
made  to  this  tradition  in  support  of  a  particular  interpretation 
of  the  primary  evidence.  Critical  analysis  of  the  primary  evi- 
dence has  yielded  but  three  theories.  The  appearances — how- 
ever conceived' — may  be  held  to  have  occurred  in  Galilee,  in 
or  near  Jerusalem,  or  in  both  places. 

The  Galilean  Theory 

The  view  that  the  first  and  only  resurrection-appearances  of 
Jesus  took  place  in  Galilee  is  not  merely  wide-spread  but  has 
attained  the  status  of  a  "  critical  tradition  ".  It  is  closely  as- 
sociated with  the  theory  of  a  "  flight  of  the  disciples  to 
Galilee  "  on  the  night  of  Jesus'  arrest  or  not  later  than  Easter 
morning  and  without  knowledge  of  the  empty  tomb  or  news 
of  the  resurrection.*®     The  advocates  of  this  view  usually 

"  Apol.  xxi. ;  cf.  Appendix,  p.  353,  V. 

"  Tischendorf,  Evangelia  Apocrypha',  1876,  Acta  Pilati;  cf.  Appendix, 
pp.  353  f-,  VI.  Justin,  Dial.  li.  271  A,  mentions  the  intention  to  appear  again 
in  Jerusalem  (Td\i»  irapayevT^<r€<r0ai  iv  'lepova-a\-fin)  as  part  of  Jesus*  pro- 
phecies of  his  passion;  the  scattering  and  flight  of  the  disciples  (Mk. 
xiv.  27;  Mt.  xxvi.  31;  Mk.  xiv.  50;  Mt.  xxvi.  56)  is  retained  but  without 
intimation  of  a  "flight  to  Galilee":  Apol.  i.  50,  86  A  /ierA  <^v  rh  trrav- 
piodrjvai  a^bv  Kal  ol  ypd>pifu)i  avroO  irdvres  dir^arricravj  &pinf}<rdiJLeyoi  ainbv  tarepov  5^» 
iK  veKpuv  dyaffTdvTos  Kal  6<f>divTos  aiiroh  kt\  ;  Dia/.  53,  273  C  /^erct  ydp  rb  crav- 
pudijpai  airrbv  ol  <ri>v  airr^  Svres  /xadrjral  ai/roO  di€<TKedd<r0ri<TaVj  /x^XP**  &tov  dviart]  iK 
P€KpQv  Kal  iriv€iK€v  airovs  8ti  oCtws  irpoeir€<f)'/iT€VTO  irepl  airov  iradeTv  ainbv  kt\  :  Dial. 
106,  333  C  fjuerevbrqaav  iirl  ry  d<f>UrTa<r6ai  avrov  6t€  iaravpibdrj  kt\.  Tatian,  beside 
Jerusalem  and  Galilee,  names  Capernaum  (cf.  Zahn,  Forschungen,  i.  1881, 
pp.  218  f ;  Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT,  p.  426)  ;  for  still  later  literature  cf. 
W.  Bauer,  Leben  Jesu  im  Zeitalter  der  neutest.  Apokryphen,  1909,  pp.  265  f. 

"J.  Weiss,  Der  erste  Korintherhrief,  MK.  v.  1910,  p.  350,  characterizes 
the  "flight"  theory  as  a  "scientific  legend";  cf.  SchwartzkopflF,  Die 
Weissagungen  Jesu  Christi  usw,  1895,  pp.  70  f..  The  Prophecies  of  Jesus 
Christ,  etc.  1897,  PP-  ii3  f-;  J-  A.  Cramer,  ThT.  1910,  pp.  192  ff. 


THE   RESURRECTION    APPEARANCES  317 

seek  to  distinguish  a  primary  from  a  secondary  tradition  in 
the  Gospels, — Matthew  and  Mark  being  the  representatives 
of  the  one,  Luke  and  John  of  the  other. 

Strauss  says  :^^  "  The  most  important  of  all  the  differences 
in  the  history  of  the  resurrection  turns  upon  the  question, 
what  locality  did  Jesus  design  to  be  the  chief  theatre  of  his 
appearances  after  the  resurrection  ?  "  After  reviewing  the 
contents  of  the  Gospel  narratives,  he  continues  :*^  ''  Here  two 
questions  inevitably  arise;  ist,  how  can  Jesus  have  directed 
the  disciples  to  journey  into  Galilee,  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
have  commanded  them  to  remain  in  Jerusalem  until  Pente- 
cost? and  2ndly,  how  could  he  refer  them  to  a  promised  ap- 
pearance in  Galilee,  when  he  had  the  intention  of  showing 
himself  to  them  that  very  day  in  and  near  Jerusalem?  "  He 
quotes  the  Fragmentist  [Reimarus]  i*^  "  jf  t^g  disciples  col- 
lectively twice  saw  him,  spoke  with  him,  touched  him,  and 
ate  with  him,  in  Jerusalem;  how  can  it  be  that  they  must 
have  had  to  take  a  long  journey  into  Galilee  in  order  to  see 
him?"^^  "According  to  this",  continues  Strauss,^*  "we 
must  agree  with  the  latest  criticism  of  the  gospel  of  Matthew, 
in  acknowledging  the  contradiction  between  it  and  the  rest  in 
relation  to  the  locality  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus  after  the 
resurrection;  but,  it  must  be  asked,  can  we  also  approve  the 
verdict  of  this  criticism  when  it  at  once  renounces  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  first  Gospel  in  favor  of  that  of  the  other 
Evangelists."  He  then  asks  the  question  :^^  "  which  of  the  two 
divergent  accounts  is  the  best  adapted  to  be  regarded  as  a 
traditional  modification  and  development  of  the  other?  ",  and 
answers  by  maintaining  the  primitive  character  of  the  Mat- 
thaean  account.  The  possibility*^  "  that  perhaps  originally 
only  Galilean  appearances  of  the  risen  Jesus  were  known,  but 
that  tradition  gradually  added  appearances  in  Judea  and  Jeru- 

*^The  Life  of  Jesus,  translated  from  the  fourth  German  edition  by 
George  Eliot,  fifth  ed.  in  one  vol.  1906,  p.  718. 

*^Ibid.  p.  719.  ^'Ihid.  p.  720. 

^'Cf.  also  the  statement  (p.  724)  that  the  appearance  before  the  Apos- 
tles in  Jerusalem  could  not  have  happened  because  Matthew  makes  the 
eleven  journey  to  Galilee  in  order  to  see  Jesus. 

**Ihid.  p.  721.  *^  Ibid.  p.  721.  *^  Ibid.  pp.  722  f. 


3i8  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

salem,  and  that  at  length  these  completely  supplanted  the 
former,  may  on  many  grounds  be  heightened  into  a  prob- 
ability ", — but  chiefly  on  the  ground  that  it  seems  to  be  "  a 
natural  idea  ". 

Better  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  text  of  the  New 
Testament  has  eliminated  certain  features  of  Strauss'  criti- 
cism of  the  Gospels,  but  in  his  central  contention  and  in  some 
of  his  principles  he  has  had  many  followers. 

Weizsacker*'^  argues  that  if  the  disciples  of  Jesus  withdrew 
after  his  death  xto  Galilee,  then  it  was  there  that  the  faith  in 
which  they  returned  to  Jerusalem  had  its  origin.     This  faith 
that  Jesus  lives,  that  he  is  risen,  which  furnished  for  Peter  as 
it  did  for  Paul  the  motive  power  of  a  life-work,  originated  in 
an  appearance  to  Peter  in  Galilee.    This  view",  he  admits,  is  not 
in  accord  with  the  representation  of  the  Gospels,  but  these  are 
held  to  be  only  secondary  sources  in  comparison  with  Paul's 
account  since  they  are  dominated  by  a  tendency  to  accentuate 
the  physical  reality  of  the  resurrection.     This  tendency  mani- 
fests itself  especially  in  their  account  of  the  empty  grave,  in 
the  report  of  appearances  in  Jerusalem  and  in  the  ascription 
of  bodily  or  physical  functions  to  the  risen  Jesus.     All  of 
this  is  in  conflict  with  Paul  who  knows  nothing  of  the  empty 
grave  or  of  the  appearances  to  the  women  in  Jerusalem.    Paul 
moreover  gives  a  different  description  of  the  form  of  the  ap- 
pearances.   From  the  fact  that  Paul  does  not  mention  the  ap- 
pearances in  Jerusalem  which  are  reported  in  the  Gospels 
Weizsacker  infers  ignorance  of  them  not  merely  on  Paul's 
part  but  on  that  of  the  leaders  of  the  Jerusalem  Church  as 
well,  for  it  was  from  them  that  Paul  received  his  information 
about  the  appearances.     In  the  earlier  form  of  Gospel  tradi- 
tion   (Mt.-Mk.)    appearances    in   Galilee   are    reported,    and 
only  in  the  later  form  (Lk.-Jno.)  are  they  located  in  Jerusa- 
lem, with  ever  increasing  emphasis  of  their  physical,  sensible 
aspects.     The  first  appearance  to  Peter  finds  only  an  echo  in 
Mark*^  and  is  mentioned  by  Luke^^  in  evident  dependence  on 
Paul.    The  Fourth  Gospel  mentions  Peter's  visit  to  the  grave 

*"*  Apos.  Zeitalter,  pp.  3flF;  cf.  Untersuchungen  liber  d.  evang.  Geschichte*, 
1901,  pp.  363  ff. 
"xvi.  7.  "xxiv.  34. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  319 

and  only  in  the  last  chapter  an  appearance  to  him,  but  even 
then,  not  to  him  alone.  Yet  the  fact  that  the  first  appearance 
was  made  to  Peter,  Weizsacker  regards  as  historically  the 
most  certain  event  in  the  whole  of  this  dark  period,  for  it 
alone  explains  the  historical  position  of  Peter  who  was  un- 
doubtedly the  first  man  of  the  early  Church. 

Weizsacker's  statements  characterize  rather  than  ground  the 
Galilean  theory  of  the  appearances;  and  this  is  true  likewise 
of  Wernle's  more  impassioned  argument.  Wernle^^  too  takes 
as  his  starting  point  the  flight  and  scattering  of  the  disciples  on 
the  night  of  Jesus'  arrest.  The  death  of  Jesus  seemed  for 
the  moment  to  signalize  the  triumph  of  his  enemies  and  the 
destruction  of  his  cause.  This  appeared  at  first  to  have  been 
realized  in  the  scattering  of  the  disciples.  Contrary  to  ex- 
pectation however  the  disciples  soon  assembled  again,  first  in 
Galilee  and  then  in  Jerusalem.  In  the  face  of  the  murderers 
of  Jesus  they  gave  utterance  to  the  enthusiastic  cry  "  He  is  not 
dead ;  he  lives !"  The  clever  reckoning  of  the  Sanhedrin  over- 
reached itself.  The  faith  in  the  crucified  and  risen  accom- 
plished what  the  faith  in  the  living  had  not  been  able  to 
effect, — the  founding  of  a  new  Church,  the  separation  from 
Judaism  and  the  conquest  of  the  world.  Whence  came  this 
change?  The  answer  of  the  disciples  was:  The  Lord  has 
appeared  to  us,  first  to  Peter,  then  to  the  Twelve,  then  to 
more  than  five  hundred  brethren  at  once,  then  to  James,  then 
to  all  the  Apostles.^  ^  From  these  appearances — and  the  first 
must  according  to  the  oldest  account  have  occurred  in  Galilee 
— they  inferred  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  and  his  continued 

'^Die  Anfdnge  unserer  Religion^,  1904,  pp.  81  f. ;  cf.  Die  syn.  Frage,  1899, 
pp.  246  f.  Bowen's  view  is  not  unlike  Wernle's.  He  says  {Resurrection 
in  NT.  p.  456)  :  "  And  the  fact  that  the  disciples'  first  feeling  of  amaze- 
ment and  terror  was  immediately  swallowed  up  in  the  glad  faith  that  their 
dear  Master  is  alive  forevermore,  their  heavenly  friend  and  God's  Messiah, 
is  '  the  perfect  tribute '  to  the  marvelous  impression  his  loving  personality 
had  made  on  them.  This  is,  after  all,  the  great  miracle,  the  impress  of 
Jesus'  personality  on  his  disciples.  It  was  so  deep  and  strong,  in  a  word, 
that  they  saw  him  after  he  had  died.  This  is  the  real  secret  of  the 
*  appearances ' ". 

"  I  Cor.  XV.  S-8. 


320  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

existence  in  a  glorious  state  of  being.  The  new  faith  thus 
stood  on  the  appearances  alone.  Our  judgment  concerning 
these  appearances  will  depend  in  a  measure  on  our  confidence 
in  Paul  and  his  informer;  but  ultimately  on  our  philosophical 
and  religious  standpoint — on  our  faith.  Purely  scientific  con- 
siderations cannot  decide  in  a  matter  that  concerns  the  in- 
visible world  and  the  possibility  of  a  communion  of  spirits; 
and,  since  for  Christian  faith  the  spiritual  world  is  a  reality 
transcending  the  sensible,  material  world,  there  should  be  no 
difficulty  in  believing  that  the  real  intervention  of  Jesus, 
though  mediated  by  a  vision,  is  the  ground  of  the  belief  in  the 
resurrection.  The  historian  however  cannot  rest  here,  even 
though  he  concur  in  this  judgment,  since  this  would  make  the 
origin  of  Christianity  dependent  on  chance,  as  if  the  cause  of 
Jesus  would  or  could  have  failed  apart  from  this  vision.  In  the 
person  of  Jesus  was  manifested  a  redeeming  power  too  great 
and  too  triumphant  to  have  been  destroyed  by  a  shameful 
death.  Thus  the  appearances  accomplished  their  far  reaching 
effect  not  accidentally  but  because  of  the  earlier  redemptive 
impression  of  Jesus. 

P.  W.  Schmiedel  has  given  a  fuller  statement  of  the  grounds 
upon  which  the  Galilean  theory  is  based.  He  says  \^^  "  An 
equally  important  point  is  that  the  first  appearances  happened 
in  Galilee."  For^^  "  the  most  credible  statement  in  the  Synop- 
tics is  that  of  Mt.  (and  Mk.)  that  the  first  appearances  were 
in  Galilee.  The  appearance  in  Jerusalem  to  the  two  women 
(Mt.  xxviii.  9  f.)  is  almost  universally  given  up — not  only 
because  of  the  silence  of  all  the  other  accounts,  but  also  be- 
cause in  it  Jesus  only  repeats  the  direction  which  the  women 
had  already  received  through  the  angel.  If  the  disciples  had 
seen  Jesus  in  Jerusalem  as  Lk.  states,  it  would  be  absolutely 
incomprehensible  how  Mk.  and  Mt.  came  to  require  them  to 
repair  to  Galilee  before  they  could  receive  a  manifestation  of 
Jesus.  The  converse  on  the  other  hand  is  very  easy  to  under- 
stand; Lk.  found  it  inconceivable  that  the  disciples  who,  ac- 
cording to  him,  were  still  in  Jerusalem,  should  have  been  un- 
able to  see  Jesus  until  they  went  to  Galilee.    In  actual  fact  the 

"£5.  iv.  col.  4063.  ""EB.  ii.  col.  1878  f. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  321 

disciples  had  already  dispersed  at  Gethsemane  (Mk.  xiv.  50, 
Mt.  xxvi.  56)  ;  this  Lk.  very  significantly  omits.  Even  Peter, 
after  he  had  perceived,  when  he  denied  his  Master,  the  dangers 
he  incurred,  will  hardly  have  exposed  himself  to  these,  gratui- 
tously, any  longer.  At  the  cross  only  women,  not  disciples, 
were  present.  Whither  these  last  had  betaken  themselves  we 
are  not  told.  But  it  is  not  difficult  to  conjecture  that  they  had 
gone  to  their  native  Galilee.  The  angelic  command,  there- 
fore, that  they  should  make  this  their  rendezvous,  may  reason- 
ably be  taken  as  a  veiled  indication  that  they  had  already  gone 
thither.  The  presupposition  made  both  by  Mk.  and  by  Mt. 
that  they  were  still  in  Jerusalem  on  the  day  of  the  resurrec- 
tion is  accordingly  erroneous.  It  was  this  error  of  theirs 
that  led  Lk.  to  his  still  more  erroneous  inversion  of  the  actual 
state  of  the  facts."  But^^  ''  if  Galilee  and  Jerusalem  were  at 
first  mutually  exclusive,  both  cannot  rest  upon  equally  valid 
tradition;  there  must  have  been  some  reason  why  the  one 
locality  was  changed  for  the  other.  ...  if  Mk.  and 
Mt.  had  to  fall  back  on  their  own  powers  of  conjecture, 
where  else  were  they  to  look  for  appearances  if  not  in  Jerusa- 
lem where  the  grave,  the  women,  and'  the  disciples  were? 
Thus  the  tradition  which  induced  them  to  place  the  appear- 
ances in  Galilee  must  have  been  one  of  very  great  stability." 
And  again^^  "  As  long  as  there  was  still  current  knowledge 
that  the  first  appearances  of  the  risen  Jesus  were  in  Galilee, 
the  fact  could  be  reconciled  with  the  presence  of  the  disciples 
in  Jerusalem  on  the  morning  of  the  resurrection  only  (a)  on 
the  assumption  that  they  were  then  directed  to  go  to  Galilee. 
The  natural  media  for  conveying  such  a  communication  must 
have  seemed  to  be  the  angels  at  the  sepulchre  in  the  first  in- 
stance, and  after  them  the  women.  So  Mk.  and  Mt. 
So  far  as  Mt.  is  concerned  this  direction  to  be  given  to 
the  disciples  was  perhaps  the  [or  a]  reason  .  .  .  why  the 
women  should  be  made  to  go  to  the  grave  so  early  as  the 
evening  ending  the  Sabbath,  so  that  the  disciples  might  still  in 
the  course  of  the  night  have  time  to  set  out  and  if  possible 
obtain  a  sight  of  Jesus  within  three  days  after  his  crucifixion. 

"£5.  iv.  col.  4064.  '^EB.  iv.  col.  4072. 


323 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


(b)  Yet  such  a  combination  as  this  was  altogether  too  strange. 
Why  should  Jesus  not  have  appeared  forthwith  in  Jerusalem 
to  the  disciples?  Accordingly  Lk.  and  Jn.  simply  sup- 
pressed the  direction  to  go  to  Galilee,  finding  themselves  un- 
able to  accept  it,  and  transferred  the  appearances  to  Jerusa- 
lem. Or,  it  was  not  our  common  evangelists  who  did  both 
things  at  one  and  the  same  time,  but  there  had  sprung  up, 
irrespective  of  Mk.  and  Mt.,  the  feeling  that  Jesus  must 
in  any  case  have  already  appeared  to  the  disciples  in  Jerusa- 
lem; it  presented  itself  to  Lk.  and  Jn.  wkh  a  certain  degree 
of  authority,  and  these  writers  had  not  now  any  occasion  to 
invent  but  simply  to  choose  what  seemed  to  them  the  more 
probable  representation,  and  then,  when  in  the  preparation  of 
their  resp>ective  books  they  reached  the  order  to  go  to  Galilee, 
merely  to  pass  over  it  or  get  around  it  as  no  longer  com- 
patible with  the  new  view." 

This  argument  is  interesting  as  a  highly  subjective  re- 
construction of  a  possible  development  of  Gospel  tradition 
regarding  the  place  of  the  appearances  on  the  hypothesis  of 
a  "  flight  of  the  disciples  to  Galilee."  This  hypothesis  is 
maintained  against  all  the  documentary  evidence,' — the  earlier 
(Mk.  and  Mt.)  as  well  as  the  later  (Lk.  and  Jno.), 
on  Schmiedel's  own  analysis.  The  appearance  to  the  women 
in  Jerusalem — also  contained  in  a  representative  of  the  earlier 
form  of  Gospel  tradition  (Mt.) — is  rejected  on  equally 
subjective  grounds;  while  the  exposition  of  the  origin  and 
growth  of  the  later  form  of  Gospel  tradition  as  embodied  in 
Luke  and  John  is  little  more  than  an  elaboration  of  Strauss' 
principle  that  the  tradition  which  reflects  a  "  natural  idea  " 
is  secondary.  Of  actual  evidence  in  support  of  the  Galilean 
theory  Schmiedel  offers  nothing. 

The  advocates  of  the  Galilean  theory,  finding  so  little  in 
the  Gospels  that  is  favorable  to  their  view  and  much  that  is 
opposed  to  it,  have  had  recourse  to  later  extra-canonical  liter- 
ature. When  a  fragment  of  the  Gospel  of  Peter  was  dis- 
covered and  published  in  1892,  Harnack^^  sought  to  show 

^  Bruchstiicke  des  Evangeliums  und  der  Apokalypse  des  Petrus',  1893, 
pp.  31  ff.,  62. 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  323 

that  it  contained  valuable  material  from  which  the  character 
and  probable  contents  of  the  original  ending  of  Mark  might 
be  ascertained.  This  view  was  developed  by  Rohrbach^"^  in 
a  form  subsequently  approved  in  its  essential  features  by  Har- 
nack  himself.^ ^  From  Mk.  xiv.  28,  xvi.  7  it  is  inferred  that 
the  Gospel  in  its  original  form  narrated  an  appearance  in 
Galilee,  the  ending  having  been  removed  before  the  Gospel 
was  used  by  Matthew  and  Luke.  From  internal  indications  it 
is  inferred  that  the  original  ending  probably  contained  the 
following:  an  appearance  to  the  disciples  in  Galilee,  some 
word  of  Jesus  in  referf:nce  to  the  continuation  of  his  work, 
ignorance  on  the  part  of  the  disciples  of  the  resurrection  until 
the  appearance  in  Galilee,  and  an  unpreparedness  of  the  dis- 
ciples for  the  first  appearance.  The  other  Gospels  contain  no 
trace  of  the  existence  of  such  an  ending,  for  they  all  imply 
knowledge  of  the  resurrection  before  the  return  of  the  dis- 
ciples to  Galilee.  The  literary  phenomena  of  the  Gospel  of 
Peter  however  show  that  Mk.  xvi.  1-8  is  the  source  of  its 
narrative  in  verses  50-57  and  it  is  thought  probable  therefore 
that  verses  58-60  depend  on  the  lost  ending.  In  these  verses 
the  disciples  are  represented  as  returning  to  Galilee  at  the  end 
of  the  feast  in  sorrow  and  therefore  without  knowledge  of  the 
resurrection.  Levi  is  called  the  son  of  Alphaeus, — a  designa- 
tion found  only  in  Mk.  ii.  14.  And  finally  the  Gospel  of 
Peter  breaks  off  just  as  it  is  about  to  narrate  an  appearance 
in  Galilee.  The  character  of  the  original  ending  of  Mark  thus 
explains  its  loss,  and  the  circumstances  of  its  loss  explain  the 
fact  that  it  was  not  known  to  Matthew  or  Luke ;  for,  because  it 
did  not  agree  with  the  tradition  regarding  the  appearances 
which  was  current  in  Johannine  circles  in  Asia  Minor,  it  was 
intentionally  removed  and  the  secondary  ending  ([Mk.]  xvi. 
9-20)  substituted  for  it, — although  not  necessarily  at  just  the 
same  time.  The  central  point  in  the  original  ending  must  have 
been  the  restoration  of  Peter.     This  is  equally  central  in  Jno. 

"D^r  Schluss  des  Markusevangeliums  usw.  1894;  Die  Berichte  ilher 
die  Auferstehung  Jesu,  1898. 

^  Gesch.  d.  altchr.  Lit.  bis  Eusebius,  ii.  Die  Chronologie,  i.  1897,  pp. 
696  f. ;  ThLz.  1899,  pp.  174  ff. ;  Lukas  der  Arzt,  1906,  pp.  158  f. ;  Neue  Unter- 
suchungen  sur  Apostelgeschichte,  191 1,  pp.  no  ff. 


324 


THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES 


xxi.  But  this  chapter  does  not  fit  well  after  chapter  xx,  for 
it  represents  the  disciples  as  returning  to  their  fishing  and 
this  suits  only  a  time  before  they  had  learned  of  the  resur- 
rection— as  in  the  Gospel  of  Peter  and  the  original  ending 
of  Mark.  The  Gospel  of  Peter  however  is  not  dependent  on 
Jno.  xxi.  The  names  Andrew  and  Levi  and  the  designation  of 
the  appearance  by  the  Sea  as  the  third — manifestly  a  polemic 
against  its  representation  as  the  first  in  the  original  ending  of 
Mark — make  the  theory  of  dependence  unlikely.  Jno.  xxi 
(but  not  verse  7  or  the  narrative  about  Jghn  at  the  close)  is 
either  a  paraphrase  of  the  original  ending  of  Mark  or  an 
express  criticism  of  it.  According  to  Lk.  xxiv.  34,  i  Cor.  xv.  5 
the  first  appearance  was  made  to  Peter;  and  it  is  probable 
therefore  that  in  the  original  ending  of  Mark  the  first  ap- 
pearance in  Galilee  was  represented  as  made  to  Peter  alone. 
This  was  doubtless  followed  by  an  appearance  to  the  Twelve 
(i  Cor.  XV.  5)  in  GaHlee  (implied  in  Mark)  and  possibly 
in  the  evening  at  a  meal  (Lk.-Jno.).  The  alteration  to  which 
Mark  was  subjected  moreover  is  not  isolated  but  has  in  the 
other  Gospels  parallels  which  probably  had  their  origin  in  the 
same  circles.^®  This  process  of  alteration  was  dominated  by 
the  tendency  to  substitute  another  tradition  of  the  appearances 
for  that  of  the  original  ending  of  Mark,  that  is,' — to  substi- 
tute Jerusalem  for  Galilee  as  the  place  of  the  first  appearances, 
and  to  subordinate  the  appearance  to  Peter. 

The  central  contention  of  this  theory  is  the  knowledge  and 
use  of  the  original  ending  of  Mark  by  the  Gospel  of  Peter. 
But  the  evidence  for  this  is  far  from  being  conclusive.  The 
return  of  the  disciples  to  Galilee  without  knowledge  of  the 
resurrection  is  implied  in  the  Gospel  of  Peter,  but  this  is  cer- 
tainly a  secondary  feature  closely  connected  with  the  tendency 
which  characterizes  its  description  of  the  resurrection.^^  The 
coincidence  with  Mk.  ii.  14  does  not  prove  knowledge  and 
use  of  an  original  ending;  while  Luke  by  mentioning  the 
appearance    to    Peter^^    falls    out    of    its    role,    and    John's 

'^•Jno.  xxi.;  Mt.  xxviii.  9-10;  Lk.  xxiv.  12;  [Mk.]  xvi.  9-20. 
*  Schubert,    Die   Composition    des   pseudopetrinischen    Evangelienfrag- 
ments,  1893,  pp.  140  ff. 
•*xxiv.  34. 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  325 

''  polemic "  third  receives  its  character  from  the  theory.^^ 
W.  Briickner^^  maintains  against  Rohrbach  the  dependence 
of  [Mk.]  xvi.  9-20  on  Luke  and  John.  Lk.  xxiv  with  its  bold 
transfer  of  the  appearances  from  Galilee  to  Jerusalem  is  older ; 
but  it  is  dependent  on  Mk.  xvi.  1-8.  In  Lk.  xxiv.  6,  Mk.  xvi. 
7  (xiv.  28)  is  intentionally  changed.  The  narrative  of  the 
appearance  to  the  disciples  at  Emmaus  has  its  origin  in  the 
dogmatic  reflection  and  poetic  art  that  created  the  allegories  in 
iv.  16-30,  V.  I -10,  vii.  36-49.  Jno.  xx  is  dependent  on  Lk. 
xxiv  and  Mk.  xvi,  but  its  narrative  is  purely  allegorical,  the 
different  characters  being  merely  typical  stages  of  the  faith  in 
the  glorified  Christ.  Thus  the  tradition  which  locates  the  ap- 
pearances in  Jerusalem  is  Lucan  rather  than  Johannine.  The 
Gospel  of  Peter  and  Jno.  xxi  furnish  no  support  to  the 
Galilean  localization,  for  it  is  not  certain  that  the  former 
depends  on  the  lost  ending  of  Mark  and  the  latter  occupies 
its  proper  place  in  an  allegorical  narrative.  Matthew  indeed 
is  dependent  on  Luke  but  its  rejection  of  the  Jerusalem  for 
the  Galilean  localization  is  deliberate. 

The  theory  of  a  Lucan  transformation  of  the  primitive 
Galilean  localization  of  the  appearances  is  carried  forward  by 
Volter  in  his  analysis  of  the  Emmaus  narrative.^*  Volter 
holds  that  Jno.  xxi  and  the  last  verses  of  the  Gospel  of  Peter 
are  derived  from  the  lost  ending  of  Mark  which  contained 
not  only  an  appearance  to  Peter  but  also  an  appearance  to  the 
disciples  in  Galilee,  in  both  of  which  Jesus  was  made  known 
in  the  breaking  of  bread.  The  Galilean  location  of  the  ap^ 
pearance  to  Peter  is  implied  in  Mark,  Luke,  the  Gospel  ac- 

®^  Cf.  L.  Brun,  ThStKr.  1911,  p.  167.  Spitta,  Das  Johannes-Evangelium 
usw.  1910,  pp.  3  ff.,  explains  tovto  ijdri  rpLrov  of  xxi.  14  by  coordination 
in  the  series  ii.  11  (  raijnjv  iirolrja-ev  dpx^v  Twv  a-tjfieluv  at  Cana)  and  iv. 
54  {tovto  (irdXip)  deiJTepop  (rrjfieiov  iirolrja-ev  at  Cana-Capernaum).  Chapter  xxi 
was  added  and  transformed  by  a  "  Bearbeiter "  from  aMocument  which 
recounted  the  incident  of  Peter's  call  in  the  beginning  of  Jesus'  Galilean 
ministry.  But  much  of  Spitta's  literary  analysis  is  over  subtle  and  its 
subjectivity  here  is  not  transcended  by  the  proposed — but  extremely  im- 
probable— coordination  and  the  hypothesis  of  redaction. 

""PrM.  1899,  pp.  41  ff.,  76  ff.,  153  ff. 

^  Die  Entstehung  des  Glaubens  an  die  Auferstehung  Jesu,  1910;  PrM. 
191 1,  pp.  6iff. 


326  THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES 

cording  to  the  Hebrews,  and  the  Didascalia.  Luke  indeed 
locates  this  appearance  near  Jerusalem,  but  Cleopas  is  simply 
a  transformation  of  Clopas^^  and  his  unnamed  companion  is 
no  other  than  Peter®**  while  Emmaus  was  a  town  in  Galilee 
between  Tiberias  and  Tarichaa.®"^  The  Gospel  according  to 
the  Hebrews  has  also  transformed  this  appearance,  substi- 
tuting, under  the  influence  of  its  Jewish  Christian  tendency, 
James  for  Peter  and  Jerusalem  for  Galilee.  The  Didascalia 
witnesses  to  it  by  its  account  of  an  appearance  in  a  house 
[of  Levi]  in  Galilee.  The  second  appearance  was  also  in 
Galilee  and  to  the  Apostles.  This  is  implied  in  Mark  and 
witnessed  to  by  Matthew,  Luke,  the  Gospel  according  to  the 
Hebrews  in  Ignatius,®^  the  Didascalia,  the  Gospel  of  Peter, 
and  Jno.  xxi.  Luke  transferred  this  appearance  also  to  Jeru- 
salem. The  appearance  to  the  Apostles  in  the  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  the  Hebrews  is  parallel  with  Lk.  xxiv.  36ff  but  is 
drawn  from  Luke's  source,  in  which  the  location  was  Galilee 
and  the  occasion  at  a  meal.  This  is  the  situation  implied  also 
in  the  Didascalia  where  the  appearance  "  to  us  "  is  followed 
by  instructions  regarding  fasting.  This  is  the  appearance  im- 
plied likewise  in  the  Gospel  of  Peter,  for  the  mention  of  others 
beside  Peter  shows  that  the  appearance  was  not  to  Peter 
alone.  Jno.  xxi  depends  on  the  same  source  and  describes 
this  appearance  with  addition  of  distinctively  Johannine  ele- 
ments.®^ 

The  subjectivity  of  Volter's  criticism  by  which  Luke  is 
transformed  into  a  witness  to  the  Galilean  localization  of  the 
appearances  reaches  its  climax  when,  in  the  attempt  to  fore- 
stall an  impression  of  arbitrariness,  it  is  said:''^^  "If  any 
one  be  disposed  to  call  this  criticism  of  the  Lucan  narrative 
of  the  Emmaus  disciples  arbitrary,  we  reply  that  it  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  and  that  the  Apostle  Paul, — the  author  of  i 
Cor.  XV.  5' — had  he  been  able  to  read  the  narrative  of  Lk, 
would  have  subjected  it  to  similar  treatment.  If  arbitrariness 
is  to  be  found  at  all,  then  it  is  certainly  on  the  side  of  Luke." 

*'  Identified  with  Peter  in  Die  Entstehung  usw.  p.  39. 
"  PrM.  191 1,  p.  64.  ^  PrM.  191 1,  p.  64. 

''\4d.  Smyrn.  iii.  i,  2;  cf.  Appendix,  pp.  352  f.,  IV. 
"^^  Die  Entstehung  usw.  p.  52.  ''*  PrM.  191 1,  p.  65. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  327 

Volter  thought  it  strange  that  no  account  of  the  appearance 
to  Peter  should  have  been  preserved  in  Gospel  tradition,  and 
upon  investigation  was  persuaded  that  it  lay  hidden  in  the 
story  of  the  walk  to  Emmaus.  His  hypothesis  however  was 
beset  with  local  diffculties,  for  this  appearance — on  the  Gali- 
lean theory — must  have  occurred  in  Galilee.  It  was  not  un- 
natural therefore  that  some  incident  with  a  distinctly  Galilean 
setting  should  prove  more  enticing  to  independent  and  hardy 
discoverers.  Mt.  xxviii.  16  mentions  a  mountain  as  the  scene 
of  the  Galilean  appearance,  and  the  Synoptic  Gospels  locate 
the  transfiguration  of  jesus  on  a  mountain.  Moreover  the 
narratives  of  the  transfiguration  have  been  interpreted  as 
merely  symbolical ^  or  as  reflecting  a  faith  already  influenced 
by  belief  in  the  resurrection.'''^  It  was  not  surprising  therefore, 
that  Wellhausen"^^  should  venture  upon  the  supposition  that 
the  transfiguration  story  is  actually  a  resurrection  narrative 
and  perhaps  the  oldest  in  the  Gospels, — Peter  being  the  first 
to  recognize  the  transfigured  Christ. 

But  this  view  does  not  satisfy  the  statement  of  Paul,''^^  which 
implies  an  appearance  to  Peter  alone ;  and  it  leaves  no  place  for 
the  doubt  of  the  disciples.  "^^  The  narrative  clearly  reflects 
some  other  incident  in  the  experience  of  Peter. '^^  For  these 
reasons    Kreyenbiih^'''    rejects   Wellhausen's   theory   in   part. 

^^C.  H.  Weisse,  Die  evangelische  Geschichte,  1838,  i,  p.  541;  ii.  p.  400; 
Die  Evangelienfrage,  1856,  pp.  255  ff. ;  Weizsacker,  Apos.  Zeitalter,  p.  397 ; 
Loisy,  Les  Svangiles  synoptiques,  ii.   1909,  p.  29. 

"Holtzmann,  HC.  i.  Die  Synoptiker^,  1901,  p.  86;  Bacon,  AJTh.  1902, 
p.  259;  Goodspeed,  AJTh,  1905,  p.  448;  Case,  AJTh.  1909,  p.  184;  cf. 
Loisy,  £vang.  syn.  ii.  p.  40;  Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT.  pp.  4i9£;  H. 
Meltzer,  PrM.  1902,  pp.  154  ff.  (locating  the  first  appearance  to  Peter  on 
Tabor,  the  traditional  mount  of  the  transfiguration,  where  Peter  and  John 
and  Levi  had  stopped  over  night  on  their  flight  from  Jerusalem  to  Galilee). 

''^  Das  Evangelium  Marci,  1903,  p.  yy,  cf.  van  den  Bergh  van  Eysinga, 
Indische  EinflUsse  auf  die  evangelische  Erzdhlungen,  1904,  pp.  62  f. ;  Loisy, 
£vang.  syn.  ii.  p.  39;  identified  by  W.  Erbt,  Das  Marcusevangelium  usw. 
1911,  p.  35,  with  the  ascension;  cf.  also  the  criticism  of  this  view  by 
Spitta,  ZwTh.  191 1,  p.  165. 

"  I  Cor.  XV.  5 ;  cf.  Lk.  xxiv.  34. 

■^"Mt.  xxviii.  17. 

"  Identified  by  Kreyenbiihl  with  Acts  ii.  i  ff. 

''^  ZNW.  1908,  pp.  257-296;  van  den  Bergh  van  Eysinga,  Indische  Bin- 


328  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

The  transfiguration  story  was  originally  a  resurrection  nar- 
rative, but  it  does  not  recount  the  first  appearance  to  Peter. 
The  oldest  narrative  of  this  incident  is  rather  to  be  found 
in  the  description  of  Jesus'  walking  on  the  water^®  and  its 
variants. ''^  The  story  in  its  original  form  is  thought  to 
have  come  from  Peter  and  to  have  formed  part  of  the  primi- 
tive Gospel  of  the  Jerusalem  Church.®^  It  describes  in  the 
language  of  fantasy  the  experience  through  which  Peter 
passed  from  popular  ghost-fear  to  belief  in  the  resurrection, 
i.  e.  to  the  eschatologico-apocalyptic  belief  that  Jesus  was 
the  exalted  Messiah.  This  belief  transformed  both  Peter 
and  Jesus.  Through  Peter's  influence  others  were  led  to  a 
similar  faith,  first  the  Twelve,  then  more  than  five  hundred. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  the  two  narratives  of  Jesus'  walking 
on  the  water  and  the  transfiguration  on  the  mount.  Both 
are  resurrection  narratives  and  recount  the  genesis  and 
growth  of  the  resurrection-faith  first  in  Peter  and  the  other 
disciples  in  Galilee  and  then  in  the  five  hundred  or  more  in 
Jerusalem, — the  mount  in  the  transfiguration  narrative  being 
merely  the  figurative  mount  of  revelation. ^^ 

fiiisse,  p.  47;  O.  Schmiedel,  Die  Hauptprobleme  der  Leben-Jesu-For- 
schung*,  1906,  pp.  81  f. ;  cf.  Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT.  p.  417  n.  i. 

'*Mt.  xiv.  22-23. 

"  Mk.  iv.  35-41 ;  vi.  42-52 ;  Mt.  viii.  23-27. 

"  The  relation  of  the  variants  to  the  original  is  conceived  as  follows : 
Peter  first  told  the  story  in  Aramaic;  this  was  translated  into  Greek  by 
John  Mark  and  formed  the  concluding  part  of  the  primitive  Gospel  of 
the  Jerusalem  Church  before  70  AD;  it  was  then  transformed  by  a  Gen- 
tile Christian  of  the  West  into  a  magical  stilling  of  a  sea  storm;  the 
redactor  of  Mark's  Gospel  took  the  story  of  the  storm  from  oral  tradition 
(Mk.  iv.  35-41)  and  himself  produced  another  variant  of  the  original 
(Mk,  vi.  42-52)  ;  finally  the  redactor  of  Matthew  both  preserved  the  orig- 
inal, which  he  inserted  in  Mark's  order  (Mt.  xiv.  22-23),  and  added  in 
dependence  on  Mark  his  variant  of  the  storm   (viii.  23-27). 

^  On  the  Galilean  theory  cf.  C.  H.  Weisse,  Evang.  Gesch.  ii,  349  ff.,  358  f., 
386,  416;  Keim,  Geschichte  Jesu  von  Nasara,  iii.  1872,  pp.  533ff;  W. 
Brandt,  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893,  pp.  337  flF. ;  Pfleiderer,  Urchristentum, 
i.  pp.  2  ff.,  395;  P.  W.  Schmidt,  Die  Geschichte  Jesu,  ii,  1904,  pp.  401  ff. ; 
O.  Holtzmann,  Leben  Jesu,  1901,  pp,  390  ff. ;  N.  Schmidt,  The  Prophet  of 
Nazareth,  1905,  pp.  392  flf. ;  A.  Meyer,  Auferstehung,  usw.  pp.  127  ff, ;  Bousset^ 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  329 


The  Jerusalem  Theory 

In  opposition  to  the  theory  which  locates  the  first  appear- 
ances in  GaHlee,  Loofs,^^  in  dependence  on  the  Luke-John 
tradition,  seeks  to  establish  the  theory  of  localization  in  and 
about  Jerusalem.  He  argues  that  the  theory  which  locates  the 
appearances  in  Galilee,  in  the  form  which  denies  as  in  that 
which  accepts  the  historicity  of  the  empty  grave  on  the  third 
day,  is  untenable.  For  the  flight  of  the  disciples^^  was  not 
a  "  flight  to  Galilee."  On  the  contrary  Mk.  xvi.  7^*  implies 
their  presence  in  Jerusalem  on  Easter  morning.  This  theory 
moreover  finds  no  support  in  Justin.  ^^  It  rests  chiefly  on 
Mark.  But  Mark  was  not  written  by  an  eye-witness,  and 
the  lost  ending  is  an  unknown  quantity.  The  Papian  tradition 
regarding  the  Petrine  source  of  Mark  may  have  had  no  other 
basis  than  i  Pet.  v.  13,  and  there  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  sup- 
posing that  the  contents  of  the  lost  ending  are  preserved  in 
Jno.  xxi.  I  Cor.  xv.  5  favors  Jerusalem  as  the  place  of  the  ap- 
pearance to  Peter.  It  is  more  probable  therefore  that  the  Mat- 
thew-Mark tradition  is,  like  the  Synoptic  account  of  Jesus' 
public  ministry,  one-sidedly  Galilean.  And  finally  Mark  is  the 
only  source  of  this  tradition;  for  there  is  no  proof  that  Mat- 
thew had  any  other  basis  for  the  Galilean  localization.  The 
Gospel  of  Peter  depends  on  Mark.     Lk.  xxiv.  34  cannot  be 

SNT.  ii.  p.  148;  Loisy,  £vang.  syn.  ii.  pp.  74iff;  Bacon,  The  Founding 
of  the  Church,  1909,  pp.  25  ff.,  The  Beginnings  of  Gospel  Story,  1909,  pp. 
xvii  f.,  xl,  190  ff. ;  Edmunds,  OC.  1910,  pp.  130  ff. ;  Bowen,  Resurrection  in 
NT.  pp.  150  ff.,  430,  432  f.,  440  n,  I ;  Conybeare,  Myth,  Magic  and  Morals, 
1909,  pp.  291   f.,  301  ff. 

^^Die  Auferstehungsherichte  und  ihr  Wert,  1908;  cf.  the  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  Galilean  tradition  by  Holsten,  Zum  Evangelium  des  Paulus 
und  des  Petrus,  1868,  pp.  119,  156  ff. — under  the  influence  of  an  anti-Paul- 
ine polemic;  by  Hilgenfeld,  ZzvTh.  1868,  pp.  73f,  Nov.  Test.  ex.  Can.  iv. 
Evang.  sec.  Heb.  1866,  pp.  29  ff, — under  the  influence  of  a  redaction  favor- 
able to  the  Gentile  Christian  Church ;  by  Korff,  Auferstehung  Christi  usw. 
pp.  47  ff.,  92,  104  f. — under  the  influence  of  a  Marcan  apologetic  against  the 
derivation  of  the  appearances  from  the  empty  tomb. 

'"Mk.  xiv.  50.  ^Also  Mt.  xxviii.  10. 

^Dial.  S3  P-  180  C;  106  p.  378  C;  Apol.  i.  50  p.  136  A;  cf.  above  note  38. 


330 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


separated  from  its  context  and  assigned  to  another  (Galilean) 
source;  and  Jno.  xxi,  although  it  describes  the  first  appearance, 
is  proven  to  be  inaccurate  by  i  Corinthians  and  may  well  be  de- 
pendent on  the  Synoptic  tradition.  On  the  other  hand  the 
tradition  of  Luke-John  is  commended  as  trustworthy  by  its 
agreement  with  Paul,  although  Luke  adds  the  appearance  to 
the  disciples  at  Emmaus  and  John  the  appearance  to  Mary 
Magdalene.  Luke  moreover  shows  by  his  narrative  of  the 
last  journey  to  Jerusalem  that  he  had  access  to  a  special 
source,  and  John  embodies  Johannine  tra4ition.  Mt.  xxviii. 
i6ff  may  correspond  with  i  Cor.  xv.  6,  but  Lk.  xxiv.  49  ex- 
cludes the  Galilean  localization.  The  Galilean  appearance  in 
Jno.  xxi  is  discredited  on  the  same  ground  and  also  by  internal 
inconsistency.  The  rehabilitation  of  Peter®®  manifestly  be- 
longs to  the  first  appearance.  Its  Galilean  setting  is  due  to  its 
false  connection  with  xxi.  1-14, — a  connection  which  is  shown 
to  be  unhistorical  by  Paul's  silence  and  may  have  had  its 
origin  in  Lk.  v.  1-4. 

The  two  principal  pillars  upon  which  this  theory  rests — the 
reference  of  Lk.  xxiv.  49  to  the  whole  period  between  Easter 
and  Pentecost,  and  the  silence  of  Paul — are  weak  in  themselves 
and  quite  insufficient  to  support  the  structure  that  is  built  upon 
them.  The  Marcan  tradition,  with  its  indication  of  Galilee, 
cannot  be  discredited  by  a  vague  suspicion  regarding  its  ulti- 
mate Petrine  source  or  by  the  argument  from  silence  since  the 
Gospel  in  its  earliest  transmitted  form  is  incomplete.  There 
is  no  evidence  for  rejecting  the  Galilean  location  of  the  appear- 
ance recorded  in  Mt.  xxviii.  16  ff,  for  Paul  is  equally  silent 
about  Jerusalem.  And  if  the  Mark-Matthew  tradition  gives 
evidence  of  an  appearance  in  Galilee  no  reason  remains  for 
the  proposed  transformation,  analysis  and  derivation  of  Jno. 
xxi.^*^ 

^•xxi,  15-19  (23). 

"J.  A.  Cramer's  advocacy  of  the  Jerusalem  tradition  (ThT.  1910,  pp. 
189-222)  is  scarcely  less  negative  in  its  treatment  of  the  Galilean  tradition. 
The  two  traditions  are  thought  to  be  mutually  exclusive.  All  the  documen- 
tary evidence,  it  is  held,  witnesses  to  the  presence  of  the  disciples  in  Jeru- 
salem on  the  day  of  the  resurrection,  and  the  theory  both  of  the  flight  to 
Galilee  and  of  the  first  and  special  appearance  to   Peter  in  Galilee  is 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  331 

In  the  interest  of  the  Jerusalem  localization  of  the  ap- 
pearances appeal  has  been  made  to  a  geographical  tradition  in 
which  mention  is  made  of  a  Galilee  near  Jerusalem.  Accord- 
ing to  this  tradition  the  peak  to  the  north  of  the  Mount  of 
Olives  or  the  entire  region  including  the  Mount  of  Olives  bore 
the  name  Galilee  in  the  time  of  Jesus.  The  words  of  Jesus 
.and  of  the  angel  ^^  have  reference  to  this  Galilee  and  were 
so  understood  by  the  disciples.  The  appearances  therefore, 
with  the  exception  of  the  one  described  in  Jno.  xxi,  occurred  in 
or  near  Jerusalem.  Evidence  for  this  view  is  sought  in  the 
Old  Testament,  especially  in  Joshua^^  and  Ezekiel  f^  but  even 
if  the  word  was  used  of  different  parts  of  Palestine  in  the 
sense  of  boundry  and  in  particular  of  the  boundary  of  the  terri- 
tory of  Benjamin  near  Jerusalem,  this  usage  would  require 
other  evidence  to  prove  its  influence  in  the  time  of  Jesus.  For 
this,  appeal  is  made  to  the  Acts  of  Pilate^^  and  to  Tertullian.®^ 
According  to  the  one  the  Mount  of  Olives  was  in  Galilee ;  ac- 
cording to  the  other  Galilee  was  in  Judea.  If  Tertullian  knew 
the  Acts  of  Pilate,  they  must  belong  in  some  form  at  least  to 
the  second  century.  His  language^^  however  finds  a  natural 
explanation  in  the  usage  of  the  time.^"*  No  other  trace  of  this 
tradition  appears  until  the  Pilgrim  literature  of  the  middle 

opposed  by  intrinsic  and  traditional  probability.  The  Jerusalem  tradition 
is  well  accredited  and  explains  the  character  of  early  Christian  faith  and 
the  origin  of  the  Church  in  Jerusalem.  Two  possibilities  are  proposed  for 
the  origin  of  the  Galilean  tradition:  either  (a)  from  appearances  there 
such  as  the  appearance  to  more  than  five  hundred  of  which  very  little 
is  known — Mt.  xxviii.  i6ff  reflecting  a  vague  Galilean  tradition  but  freely 
supplying  details  of  place  and  persons ;  or  (b)  from  an  erroneous  com- 
bination of  the  call  (Mk.  i.  16-20)  and  restoration  (Jno.  xxi.  11-19)  of 
Peter  with  a  wonderful  catch  of  fish  (Lk.  v.  i-ii;  Jno,  xxi.  2-11).  If  the 
second  of  these  possibilities  be  true,  the  whole  Galilean  tradition  must, 
as  Cramer  says  (p.  218),  be  consigned  to  the  realm  of  legend.  This  argu- 
ment, however,  in  its  negative  aspect,  like  the  argument  of  Loofs,  suffers 
from  its  insistence  on  the  exclusive  character  of  the  Jerusalem  tradition. 

''  Mt.  xxvi.  37;  Mk.  xiv.  28;  Mt.  xxviii.  7,  10;  Mk.  xvi.  7. 

*'xviii.  11-20,  XV.  1-15.  ^xlvii.  8. 

*^  Tischendorf,  Evangelia  Apocrypha;  cf.  Appendix,  pp.  353  f.,  VI. 

®^  Apol.  xxi. ;  cf .  Appendix,  p.  353,  V. 

®^Apud  Galilseam  ludseae  regionem. 

■^  Schiirer,  ThU.  1897,  PP.  187  f. 


332 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


ages.  Use  of  it  to  interpret  the  tradition  of  the  Gospels  in 
regard  to  the  place  of  the  appearances  had  a  beginning  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  In  1832  Thilo®^  reviewed  the  evidence 
and  literature.  Impressed  by  Thilo's  note,  R.  Hofmann®®  in- 
creased the  references  to  the  mediaeval  Pilgrim  literature  and 
A.  Resch®^  has  sought  to  bridge  the  chasm  between  the  Acts 
of  Pilate  and  the  New  Testament  times  by  investigating  the 
Old  Testament  usage.  The  theory  has  found  advocates  in 
Lepsius,®^  Thomsen,^^  and  Kresser;^^^  but  there  has  been  no 
increase  in  the  evidence, — which  is  ultimatdy  reducible  to  the 
Acts  of  Pilate.  Until  these  are  shown  to  contain  a  trustworthy 
tradition  of  the  geography  of  Palestine  in  the  time  of  Jesus 
the  theory  must  inevitably  yield  before  the  plain  implications 
of  a  uniform  New  Testament  usage. ^^^ 

The  Double  Tradition 

The  Gospels  witness  plainly  to  appearances  of  Jesus  in  or 
near  Jerusalem  and  in  Galilee.  This  is  true  both  of  the  Synop- 
tic and  of  the  Johannine  tradition.  Even  among  the  separate 
Gospels,  Luke  alone  records  appearances  only  in  one  general 
locality.  It  is  therefore  highly  probable  that  the  appearances 
were  not  restricted  to  a  single  place  and  that  consequently 
the  two  traditions  should  not  be  set  over  the  one  against  the 

*^  Codex  Apocryphus  Novi  Testamenti,  i.  1832,  pp.  617  ff. 

"Das  Leben  Jesu  nach  den  Apokryphen,  1851,  pp.  393  ff. ;  Ueber  den  Berg 
Galilda,  1856;  Auf  dem.Oelberg.  1896. 

"  Gebhardt  und  Harnack,  TU.  1894,  x.  2,  pp.  381  ff. ;  Das  Galilda  bet  Jeru- 
salem, 1910;  Der  Auferstandene  in  Galilda  bei  Jerusalem,  1911. 

^  Reden  und  Abhandlungen,  iv.  Die  Auferstehungsberichte,  1902. 

"  BG.  1906,  pp.  352  ff. 

^"*  ThQ.  1911,  pp.  505  ff. ;  cf.  Zimermann,  ThStKr.  1901,  p.  447. 

***Cf.  Romberg,  NkZ.  1901,  pp.  289  ff. ;  Zahn,  Gesch.  d.  nt.  Kanons,  \L 
pp.  937  f-;  NkZ.  1903,  pp.  770  ff.;  Edgar,  Exp.  1897,  ii.  pp.  119  ff. ;  Cony- 
beare,  StBE.  iv.  1896,  pp.  59  ff. ;  Voigt,  Die  aeltesten  Berichte  iiber  die 
Auferstehung  Jesu  Christi,  1906,  p.  81 ;  A.  Meyer,  Auferstehung  usw.  pp. 
95  ff. ;  Harnack,  Chronologie,  i.  pp.  603  ff. ;  Schubert,  Pseudopetrin.  Evang. 
pp.  176  ff.,  185;  Stiilcken,  in  Hennecke,  Handbuch  2.  d.  nt.  Apokryphen,. 
1904,  pp.  143  ff. ;  Riggenbach,  ThLBl.  1910,  pp.  537  f . ;  Bowen,  Resur- 
rection in  NT.  pp.  350  ff.,  440  n.  i ;  Moffatt,  Introduction  to  the  Literature 
of  the  New  Testament,  191 1,  pp.  254  f. ;  cf.  below  note  134. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  333 

Other  as  mutually  exclusive.  It  has  indeed  been  affirmed  that 
the  opposition  of  the  Galilean  and  the  Jerusalem  tradition  con- 
stitutes the  primary  condition  of  an  intelligent  criticism  of 
the  narratives  of  the  resurrection/^^  and  undoubtedly  this 
opinion  seems  to  have  become  so  axiomatic  an  historical 
premise  that  its  acceptance  is  no  longer  felt  to  constitute  a 
peculiar  virtue.  Certain  even  of  those  who  admit  a  fac- 
tual basis  underlying  the  two-fold  tradition  of  the  Gospels  do 
not  hesitate  to  speak  disparagingly  of  the  "  usual  harmonistic 
method  of  addition  ".^^^  The  denial  of  the  critical  basis  of 
the  Galilean  theory  is  of  course  destructive  of  that  theory, 
and  the  method  of  addition — however  good  in  itself — can 
serve  no  useful  purpose  for  those  who  are  persuaded  that  the 
problem  demands  a  different  process  for  its  solution. 

Just  as  the  tradition  of  the  empty  sepulchre  is  retained  by 
certain  representatives  of  the  Galilean  theory  to  explain  the 
form  of  the  disciples'  faith/^*  so  appearances  in  Jerusalem  are 
admitted  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  Lk.-Jno.  tradition  by  a 
writer  who  still  adheres  to  the  priority  of  the  Galilean  ap- 
pearances. Von  Dobschiitz^^^  holds  that  the  first  appearance 
was  made  to  Peter  in  Galilee.  The  disciples  had  returned  in 
deep  despondency  and  were  about  to  take  up  again  their  old 
trade.  They  had  dreamed  a  dream,. — a  beautiful  dream  with 
its  vision  of  thrones  and  judgment;  but  it  was  only  a  dream, 
and  back  they  must  go  to  their  fish-nets,  when  suddenly — at 
the  psychological  moment — the  Lord  intervenes  (Jno.  xxi) 
and,  by  quickening  again  their  faith  in  his  Messiahship,  makes 
them  fishers  of  men.  Their  mission  leads  them  to  Jerusalem 
where  they  are  met  by  some  who  had  seen  Jesus.  ^*^®  Subse- 
quently Jesus  appears  to  the  five  hundred  at  Pentecost. ^^''' 

"'Bousset,  ThLs.  1897,  P-  73. 

^"'von  Dobschiitz,  Prohleme  des  apostolischen  Zeitalters,  1904,  p.   10. 

^***Volter,  Die  Entstehung  usw. ;  cf.  Loofs,  Auferstehungsberichte  usw. 
pp.  18. 

^^^  Pr  obi  erne  usw.;  cf.  Clemen,  Paulus  usw.  i.  1904,  pp.  204  ff. ;  Lake, 
Hist.  Evidence,  etc.,  p.  212. 

^""Lk.  xxiv.  13  f. ;  cf.  also  Reville,  Jesus  de  Nazareth,  ii.  1906,  pp.  426  ff.  ; 
Stapfer,  La  mort  et  la  resurrection  de  Jisus  Christ,  1898,  pp.  231  ff. 

^"^Jno.  XX.  21-23;  Acts  ii.  i  ff. ;  cf.  Ostern  und  Pfingsten,  1903;  Weisse, 
Evang.  Gesch.  ii.  p.  417;  Steck,  Der  Galaterbrief,  1888,  p.  186;  Pfleiderer, 


334  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

A  less  dramatic  but  more  penetrating  discussion  of  the 
double  tradition  is  given  by  T.  S.  Rordam.^^^  Two  principal 
difficulties  confront  the  theory  of  a  twofold  location, — the 
apparent  exclusion  of  appearances  in  Galilee  by  Luke,  and 
the  apparent  exclusion  of  an  appearance  to  the  disciples  in 
Jerusalem  by  Matthew-Mark.  Rordam  seeks  to  meet  these 
difficulties  by  literary  analysis.  Luke  is  thought  to  have  fol- 
lowed a  source  of  Jerusalem  origin  in  which  two  Jerusalem 
appearances — one  on  Easter  Sunday  and  one  at  the  time  of 
the  ascension  some  forty  days  later — had  been  combined. 
The  combination  was  not  made  by  Luke  but  had  already  taken 
place  in  the  oral  tradition,  so  that  verse  47  appears  as  the 
natural  continuation  of  verse  46 ;  whereas  the  proper  place  for 
the  Galilean  appearance  implied  in  Mark  is  immediately  after 
verse  46.  As  the  result  of  this  the  command  to  tarry  in  Jeru- 
salem^^^  seemed  to  exclude  the  Galilean  appearances,  and  the 
reference  to  Galilee^ ^^  assumed  its  vaguer  form.  The  occasion 
of  the  Jerusalem  appearances  was  the  unbelief  of  the  disciples. 

But  are  such  appearances  really  excluded  by  the  contents 
of  the  lost  ending  of  Mark?  If  Matthew  and  Luke  used 
Mark,  and  Luke  follows  another  source  in  chapter  xxiv,  the 
contents  of  the  Marcan  ending  must  be  sought  in  Matthew.^^* 

Urchristentum,  i.  pp.  10  f. ;  Hamack,  Chronologie,  i.  pp.  707  f. ;  Bowen, 
however  {Resurrection  in  NT.  pp.  430  n.  i,  433)  more  logically — but  with- 
out evidence — locates  the  origin  of  the  Church  in  Galilee. 

^°*///.  1905,  pp.  769-790;  cf.  also  Peine,  Eine  vorkanon.  Oberlieferung 
d.  Lukas,  1891,  pp.  72  ff.,  160  ff. ;  Zimmerniiann,  ThStKr.  1901,  pp.  438  ff. ; 
Allen,  St.  Matthew,  ICC.  1907,  pp.  302  ff. ;  B.  Weiss,  Die  Quellen  d.  Lukas- 
evangeliums,  1907,  pp.  230  ff. 

*"*  xxiv.  49-  ""  xxiv.  6 ;  cf .  Mk.  xvi.  7. 

"^Cf.  Weisse,  Evang.  Gesch.  ii.  p.  359  f.  ;.Volkmar,  Die  Evangelien  usw. 
1870,  pp.  241,  608  ff. ;  Wright,  Some  New  Testament  Problems,  1898,  pp. 
122  f. ;  Goodspeed  AJTh.  1905,  pp.  484  ff.  says  (p.  488)  :  "  The  narrative  of 
Mark,  when  it  breaks  off  with  16:8,  evidently  demands  just  two  things  for 
its  completion ;  the  reassurance  of  the  women,  and  the  reappearance  of  Jesus 
in  Galilee.  These  two  things  Matthew  records,  and  the  conclusion  seems 
inevitable  that  he  derived  them  from  his  chief  narrative  source,  the  gos- 
pel of  Mark."  Cf.  also  Plummer,  Commentary  on  St.  Matthew,  1910, 
pp.  412  f. ;  421  f. ;  and  on  the  other  hand  Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT.  pp. 
164  ff.,  166  n.  2  and,  for  reconstruction  of  the  contents  of  the  lost  ending, 
pp.  161  f. 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  335 

Mark  cannot  have  intended  his  Gospel  to  end  with  the  words 
e<i>ofioi)VTo  yap,  and  neither  can  he  have  intended  to  say  that 
the  women  never  told  of  their  experience.  But  as  it  is  un- 
likely that  the  women  were  afraid  of  the  angel,  we  may  com- 
plete the  unfinished  sentence :  "  for  they  were  afraid  that  it 
might  not  be  true  ".  Consequently  an  appearance  of  Jesus 
to  confirm  the  message  of  the  angel  is  not  only  probable  in  it- 
self but  is  recorded  by  Mt.  xxviii.  9-12. ^^^  Mk.  xvi.  7  im- 
plies an  appearance  to  Peter  and  in  Galilee.  But  as  the  dis- 
ciples, according  to  Mark,  were  still  in  Jerusalem,  their  unbelief 
may  have  caused  an  appearance  there.  Matthew  indeed  repre- 
sents the  appearance  to  the  Eleven  in  Galilee  as  the  fulfilment 
of  the  promise  in  xxviii.  7  (Mk.  xvi.  7)  ;  but  the  definite  moun- 
tain in  xxviii.  16  implies  an  appearance  to  the  Eleven  in  Jeru- 
salem, and  the  doubt  of  some  in  xxviii.  17  suits  this  better 
than  a  later  occasion.  This  allusion  to  an  appearance  to  the 
disciples  in  Jerusalem  Matthew  derived   from   Mark,^^^  the 

"^  Spitta,  Zur  Geschichte  und  Litteratur  des  Urchristentums,  iii.  2,  1907, 
pp.  112  ff.,  argues  that  inasmuch  as  Mk.  xiv.  28,  xvi.  7  imply  an  appear- 
ance in  Galilee,  the  author  must  have  intended  to  conclude  his  Gospel  with 
a  narrative  similar  to  Mt.  xxviii.  16-20.  But  Mk.  xvi.  7  contains  also  a 
message  to  be  delivered  by  the  women  to  the  disciples.  Luke  and  John 
report  its  delivery  but  Mark  closes  with  the  statement  of  a  hindrance, 
which  can,  however,  have  been  only  the  introduction  to  an  account  of  its 
removal,  and  most  naturally  by  an  appearance  of  Jesus.  General  recog- 
ition  of  this  has  been  hindered  by  the  hypothesis  that  the  oldest  tradi- 
tion— represented  in  Mark — reported  appearances  only  in  Galilee.  As  the 
Marcan  text  demands  even  more  plainly  than  Matthew  an  appearance  to 
the  women  in  Jerusalem,  Matthew  must  have  known  the  original  ending 
of  Mark  and  furnishes — rather  than  Jno.  xxi — information  concerning  its 
contents.  Cf .  also  Streitfragen  der  Geschichte  Jesu,  1907,  pp.  78  f .  where  the 
literary  parallels  are  given,  especially  the  Marcan  ecpvyov,  rpSfjios,  Kal  e/co-Too-ts 
with  Mt.  aTreXdovcrai  rax^,  fierk  <pb^ov  koX  xS-pO'^  fjieydXris ;  the  Marcan  icpo^ovvro  ydp 
with  Mt.  ^r;  0o/3ei<r^e.  The  criticism  of  Brun,  ThStKr.  191 1,  pp.  168  f,,  does 
not  break  the  force  of  Spitta's  argument  in  so  far  as  it  concerns  the  impli- 
cations of  the  closing  verse  of  Mark  and  the  support  that  it  lends  to 
Matthew's  report  of  the  appearance  to  the  women.  Cf.  also  Stanton,  The 
Gospels  as  Historical  Documents,  ii.  1909,  pp.  201  f. 

"'  This  is  seen  also  in  the  fact  that  Matthew  does  not  mention  the  de- 
livery of  the  women's  message  to  the  disciples,  and  in  the  fact  that  the 
mountain  in  Galilee  is  said  to  have  been  appointed — not  to  the  women — 
but  to  the  disciples.    This  allusive  or  "hinting"  feature  of  the  narrative 


336  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

Marcan  account  being  omitted  because  of  an  unwillingness  to 
chronicle  the  doubts  of  the  disciples. ^^"^  The  original  con- 
clusion of  Mark  thus  contained,  according  to  Rordam,  three 
appearances  in  Jerusalem, — to  the  women,  to  Peter,  and  to 
the  Apostles.  Then  followed  an  appearance  to  the  disciples 
generally  in  Galilee, — agreeing  in  order  with  the  source  of 
Luke.  Mark  probably  contained  also  some  parting  appear- 
ance of  Jesus  similar  to  that  described  in  Lk.  xxiv.  47-53, 
Acts  i.  4-12,  I  Cor.  XV.  7, — for  this  was  part  of  the  apostolic 
tradition.  It  is,  not  contained  in  Matthew  because  it  was 
probably  lost  from  the  copy  of  Mark  used  by  Matthew. 

Rordam's  theory  depends  mainly  on  two  things:  his  recon- 
struction of  the  source  of  Lk.  xxiv  and  his  conception  of  the 
contents  of  the  lost  ending  of  Mark.  Of  these  the  latter  is  the 
more  crucial.  Is  the  method  which  follows  Matthew  as  guide 
more  satisfactory  than  that  which  follows  the  Gospel  of  Peter? 
Must  we  be  content  with  a  non  liquet,  or  is  there  a  reasonable 
minimum  of  inference  from  Mk.  xvi.  7-8  that  may  be  safely 
made?  To  this  minimum  Lyder  Brun^^^  reckons  an  appear- 
ance before  the  disciples  in  Galilee,  but  prior  to  this  an  ap- 
pearance to  Peter  in  Jerusalem — possibly  also  an  appearance 
to  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem.  In  agreement  with  Spitta^^^  it 
is  maintained  that  the  meaning  of  Trpod^co  in  Mk.  xiv.  28, 
Mt.  xxvi.  32  is  determined  by  the  reference  in  the  context 
to  the  shepherd  and  the  scattered  sheep.  After  his  resurrection 
Jesus  is  to  gather  his  scattered  disciples  and  lead  them  back  to 

is  responsible  for  the  impression,  produced  by  xxviii.  17,  that  some  of  the 
Apostles  doubted,  "  though  the  narrator  clearly  meant  to  say  that  the 
apostles  adored,  but  some  of  the  other  disciples  doubted"  (p,  785). 

"*  This  appears  in  the  silence  of  Matthew  about  the  doubt  of  the  women 
which  is  thought  to  have  been  the  occasion  of  the  appearance  in  xxviii. 
9-10. 

^"'ThStKr.  1911,  pp.  157-180. 

"•Z«r  Gesch.  u.  Lit.  d.  Urchristentums,  iii.  pp.  iii  ff. ;  Streitfragen  der 
Gesch.  Jesu,  pp.  74  flf. ;  cf.  also  Zimmermann,  ThStKr.  1901,  pp. 
446  f . ;  Riggenbach,  Aus  Schrift  u.  Geschichte,  1898,  p.  138 ;  J.  Weiss,  SNT. 
i.  p.  208 ;  Cramer,  ThT.  1910,  pp.  200  ff. ;  on  the  other  hand  Bowen,  Resur- 
rection in  NT.  p.  196,  sees  in  irpod^u  of  Mk.  xiv.  28  a  prophecy  ex  eventu 
which  witnesses  to  the  "flight  of  the  disciples  to  Galilee";  cf.  pp.  148, 
200  f. 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  337 

Galilee.  Mk.  xvi.  7  adds  to  this  the  promise  that  the  disciples 
would  see  Jesus  in  Galilee.  The  special  mention  of  Peter  is 
due  to  the  interpretation  of  Mk.  xiv.  28  as  a  call  to  go  to 
Galilee.  But  the  silence  of  the  women  prepares  for  an  ap- 
pearance to  Peter  in  Jerusalem,  that,  being  himself  strength- 
ened, he  might  gather  the  scattered  disciples  and  lead  them  back 
to  Galilee.ii^ 

In  the  light  of  Mk.  xvi.  7  there  are  four  possible  infer- 
ences regarding  the  contents  of  the  lost  ending: 

(i)  The  women  say  nothing  and  the  disciples  return  to 
Galilee  without  knowledge  of  the  empty  grave  or  the  message 
of  the  angel, — as  in  the  Gospel  of  Peter. 

(2)  The  silence  of  the  women,  caused  as  it  was  by  fear, 
lasted  but  a  short  time,  after  which,. — having  recovered  self- 
possession — they  delivered  the  message  of  the  angel, — as  in 
the  short  ending  of  Mark.^^^ 

(3)  The  fear  of  the  women  was  overcome  by  an  appearance 
of  Jesus,  after  which  they  delivered  their  message,^ ^^ — in 
which  case  there  seems  to  be  no  place  for  a  special  appearance 
to  Peter,  unless  the  message  met  with  unbelief  ^^^  and  this  was 
overcome  by  the  appearance  to  Peter. ^^^ 

(4)  Since  the  women  said  nothing  to  the  disciples  or  to 
Peter,  Jesus  appeared  to  Peter  in  Jerusalem^^^  and  directed  the 
disciples  to  go  to  Galilee. ^^^ 

The  second  of  these  possibilities  is  set  aside  because  it 
weakens  the  force  of  ovBevl  ovSev  elirov  ;  the  first  because 
the  "  flight "  theory  is  excluded  by  Mark  and  there  is  no  con- 
clusive evidence  that  the  Gospel  of  Peter  knew  the  original 
ending  of  Mark;  the  third  because  there  is  no  sufficient  evi- 
dence that  Matthew  knew  the  original  ending  of  Mark.  The 
fourth  possibility  however  avoids  both  the  weakening  of  ovhevl 
ovBev  elirov  and  the  doubling  of  the  message  to  the  women. 

"^  Cf .  Lk.  xxi.  32,  xxiv.  34 ;  i  Cor,  xv.  5. 

*^'  irdpra    5^   ret    irapT]yye\fjLha    tois  -rrepl  rbv  H^rpov    cvvrbjxias   i^-ZiyyeiXav   kt\. 
Cf.  Mt.  xxviii.  8;  Lk.  xxiv.  9. 
"'  Mt.  xxviii.  9-10. 

'"*Lk.  xxiv.  II,  22-24;  [Mk.]  xvi.  10.  ^^Lk.  xxiv.  34. 

'^  Lk.  xxiv.  34;  cf.  xxii.  :^.  ^^  Mt.  xxviii.  16. 


338  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

The  appearance  to  Peter  corresponds  also  with  the  special  ref- 
erence to  him  in  the  message  of  the  angel  and  with  the  place 
assigned  to  it  by  Paul.  The  parallel  with  Luke  is  close ;  and  it 
is  not  improbable  that  the  appearance  to  James  in  the  Gospel 
according  to  the  Hebrews  is  simply  a  transformation  of  the 
appearance  to  Peter.  The  reference  to  Galilee  in  Mark  and 
Matthew  is  to  be  explained  by  the  prominence  assigned  to 
Galilee  in  their  account  of  the  ministry  of  Jesus/^^  by  the 
prophecy  in  Mk.  xiv.  28,  and  by  the  significance  of  the  Galilean 
appearances  for  the  vocation^ ^^  of  the  Apbstles.  In  Luke  the 
intervening  step  between  the  first  and  the  last  appearances 
in  Jerusalem — the  appearances  in  Galilee — fell  away  because 
the  later  activity  of  the  Apostles,  in  which  Luke  was  particu- 
larly interested,  was  connected  with  Jerusalem. 

Even  a  minimum  of  inference  from  Mk.  xvi.  7-8  regarding 
the  contents  of  the  original  ending  of  the  Gospel  is  rejected  by 
those  who  maintain  that  the  Gospel  ended  originally — whether 
in  intention  or  in  fact — with  xvi.  8.^^^     The  statement  of 

"*  Spitta,  Streitfragen,  p.  81,  formulates  the  problem  concerning  the  place 
of  the  appearances  as  follows :  The  question  is  not,  Did  the  earliest  tra- 
dition know  of  appearances  in  Judea? — all  the  sources  agree  in  this — but, 
Did  Galilee  originally  come  into  consideration  in  this  part  of  the  history 
of  Jesus  ?  He  concludes  from  his  investigation  of  the  geographical  dispo- 
sition of  the  life  of  Jesus  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  that  the  underlying 
document  (Grundschrift)  did  not  contain  the  Galilean  appearances, — which 
were  first  added  in  their  recension  of  this  document  by  Mark-Matthew. 

""  Berufsbewusstsein, 

"•B.  Weiss,  Die  Evangelien  des  Markus  und  Lukas*  1901,  MK.  i.  2, 
p.  245.  Zahn,  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  ii.  p.  930 ;  Einleitung,  ii.,  pp.  238  ff. ; 
Riggenbach,  Aus  Schrift  und  Geschichte,  p.  126;  so  also  Wellhausen,  Das 
Evangelium  Marci,  1903,  p.  146 — though  from  a  different  point  of  view 
and  for  a  different  reason;  cf.  H.  J.  Holtzmann,  HC.  i.',  1901,  p.  183;  O. 
Holtzmann,  Lehen  Jesu,  1901,  p.  390;  R.  A.  Hoffmann,  Das  Marcusevan- 
gelium,  1904,  p.  641 ;  Wendling,  Die  Entstehung  des  Marcus-Evangeliutns, 
1908,  p.  201 — the  earliest  form  of  the  narrative  ends  with  i^h-vevaep  Mk.  xv. 
37;  cf.  the  text  in  his  Ur-Marcus,  1905,  p.  59;  Zimlmermann,  ThStKr. 
1901,  p.  148,  ends  his  AQ  source  with  Mk.  xvi.  8  and  thinks  that  the  refer- 
ence to  the  silence  of  the  women  not  only  indicates  the  absence  of  their  story 
from  earlier  tradition  but  explains  its  first  appearance  in  this  source  (cf. 
Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT.  pp.  157  f.,  180  ff.).  J.  Weiss,  Das  dlteste  Evan- 
gelium, 1903,  pp.  340  ff.,  explains  the  silence  of  the  women  about  the  empty 
tomb  from  the  apologetic  reference  of  the  story  to  the  Jews  (p.  340)  and 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  339 

Riggenbach^^'''  that  there  is  no  tradition  which  relates  exclu- 
sively Galilean  appearances  seems  to  be  true  of  the  later  as  of 
the  earlier  tradition. ^^^  The  Galilean  theory  rests  entirely,  in 
the  last  analysis,  on  an  inference,  for  the  sake  of  which  prac- 
tically all  the  documentary  evidence  is  traversed. 

There  is  indeed  some  difference  of  opinion  among  the  advo- 
cates of  the  double  tradition  about  the  duration  of  the  first  ap- 
pearances in  Jerusalem.  Zahn^^^  locates  the  appearance  de- 
scribed in  Jno.  XX.  26-29  in  Galilee  because  it  is  not  explicitly 
said  to  have  occurred  in  Jerusalem,  and  the  stay  of  the  dis- 
ciples in  Jerusalem  for  a  week  after  Easter  Sunday  is  thought 
improbable.  ^^°  Appeal  is  made  also  to  the  patristic  association 
of  the  doubt  of  Thomas  with  Mt.  xxviii.  16  f.^^^  The  impli- 
cations of  the  context,  however,  strongly  favor  Jerusalem 
as  the  scene  of  Jno.  xx.  26-29.  Moreover  the  time  of  the 
departure  to  Galilee  is  not  fixed  by  the  Synoptic  tradition.  It 
may  not  be  possible  fully  to  explain  this  stay  in  Jerusalem. 
There  was  need  to  gather  the  scattered  disciples,  inform  them 
of  the  command  to  go  to  Galilee  and  of  the  appointed  meet- 
ing-place.    Their  hopes  for  the  restoration  of  the  kingdom 

holds  that  the  Gospel  may  have  ended  with  xvi.  8  (p.  345)  ;  SNT.  i,  p. 
227.  This  theory  of  an  anti-Jewish  apologetic  motive  dominating  the 
Gospel  of  Mtark,  applied  by  Wrede  (Das  Messiasgeheimnis,  1901)  to  a 
particular  feature  of  the  Marcan  narrative,  is  generalized  by  Baldensper- 
ger  in  relation  to  the  resurrection-narratives  in  Urchristliche  Apologie, 
die  dlteste  Auferstehungskontroverse,  1909.  Cf.  also  Louis  Coulange, 
RHLR.  1911,  pp.  145  ff.,  297  ff. ;  Bowen  Resurrection  in  NT.  p,  159  n.  4. 

"^  Aus  Schrift  usw.  p.  142. 

'^  The  Gospel  of  Peter  may  constitute  an  exception,  if  not  in  fact,  at 
least  in  the  natural  inference  from  its  fragmentary  conclusion;  yet  even 
this  Gospel  makes  of  Jesus'  enemies  witnesses  of  his  resurrection  in  Jeru- 
salem (cf.  Schubert  Pseudopetrin.  Evang.  p.  96 ;  W.  Bauer,  L^&^» /^jm  usw. 
pp.  256  f). 

^^  Evang.  des  J  oh.  ZK.  iv.  1908,  p.  672. 

^^"Cf.  Mt.  xxvi.  32,  xxviii.  7,  16;  Mk.  xiv.  28,  xvi.  7. 

^^^NkZ.  1903,  p.  '^06  n.  I,  citing  a  scholion  attributed  to  Origen  in 
Cramer,  Cat.  in  Ev.  Matt,  et  Marci,  p.  243,  and  Jerome.  The  addition 
however  of  dre  ^'CKnnros  (cf.  also  Petrus  von  Laodicea,  ed.  Heinrici,  1908, 
pp.  343  f)  and  the  differentiation  of  the  two  incidents  in  Chrysostom 
weaken  the  force  of  this  appeal. 


340  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

to  IsraeH^^  would  readily  center  in  Jerusalem,  and  the  com- 
mand to  go  to  Galilee — repeated  as  it  was — may  suggest 
that  this  was  not  the  natural  thing  for  them  to  do.  Doubt 
had  to  be  overcome, — in  particular  the  doubt  of  Thomas. 
The  Jerusalem  appearances  moreover  may  well  have  been 
intended  to  serve  particularly  in  confirming  the  disciples' 
faith  in  the  resurrection,  the  Galilean  to  give  fuller  instruction 
regarding  their  subsequent  mission.  The  doubt  of  some  in 
Mt.  xxviii.  17  scarcely  suggests  the  scene  of  Jno.  xx.  26ff. 
It  may  have  had  its  occasion  in  the  form  of  "the  appearance,  or 
it  may  indicate  the  presence  of  others  beside  the  Eleven. ^^^ 

Voigt  transfers  the  ascension  from  the  Mount  of  Olives  to 
the  mount  in  Galilee,  north-west  of  Capernaum,. — the  scene 
of  the  beatitudes  and  of  the  calling  of  the  Twelve.^**  Luke 
is  supposed  to  have  identified  the  mountain  of  his  Jerusalem 
source  with  the  Mount  of  Olives  and  to  have  interpreted  the 
separation  there  of  Jesus  from  his  disciples  as  final,  in  con- 
sequence of  which  the  command  to  remain  in  the  city  was  in- 
troduced. V^^     The  appearance  to  Peter,  implied  in  Mark  and 

"*Acts  i.  6;  cf.  Lk.  xxiv.  21. 

""Cf.  Riggenbach,  Aus  Schrift  usw.  p.  150;  Voigt,  Die  aeltesten 
Berichte  iiber  die  Auferstehung  Jesu  Christi,  1906,  pp.  6s  f. ;  on  the  sum- 
mary character  of  the  description  cf.  C  H.  Weisse,  Evang.  Gesch.  ii. 
pp.  415  ff. ;  Steinmeyer,  Apologetische  Beitrdge,  iii.  1871,  p.  153,  and  J. 
Denney,  Jesus  and  the  Gospel,  1908,  pp.  155  ff. ;  Korff,  Auferstehung  usw. 
pp.  29  ff. ;  Plummer,  St.  Matthew,  p.  426. 

^Berichte  usw.  pp.  79  ff — although  rejecting  the  reference  of  ol  ird^aro 
a^Toh  6  'Irja-ovs  (Mt.  xxviii.  16)  to  the  mount  of  the  beatitudes;  cf.  Volkmar, 
Die  Evangelien  usw.  1870,  p.  609;  Westcott,  Introduction  to  the  Study  of 
the  Gospels,  i860  (1887),  p.  330;  B.  Weiss,  Das  Matth'dus-Evangelium^ 
1898,  MK.  i.  I.  p.  506;  Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT.  pp.  275  f.  The  iden- 
tification with  Thabor  is  combined  with  rejection  of  "  Galilee  on  the 
Mount  of  Olives  "  by  Ludolphus  de  Saxonia,  Vita  Christi,  ed.  Rigollot,  iv. 
1878,  p.  237,  par.  ii.  cap.  Ixxx,  i :  "  Et  sciendum,  quod  prope  montem 
Oliveti  ex  parte  boreali  ad  unum  milliare  est  mons,  qui  appellatur  Gali- 
laea:  et  dicunt  quidam  quod  ille  est  mons  praedictus  ad  quem  discipuli 
undecim  abierunt,  non  quia  mons  sit  in  Galilaea,  cum  sit  in  Judaea, 
sed  quia  mons  iste  appellatur  Galilaea;  alii,  quod  magis  videtur,  dicunt 
hoc  fuisse  in  monte  Thabor,  in  quo  Dominus  transfiguratus  fuit,  qui  vere 
in  Galilaea  consistit." 

'"^Ibid.  pp.  102  ff. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  341 

described  in  the  appendix  added  to  the  Fourth  Gospel  by  a 
disciple  of  John,  occurred  on  the  western  slope  of  the  Mount 
of  Olives.^^^  Emmaus  is  identified  with  Ensemes  between 
Bethany  and  Jericho.  Eight  days  after  the  appearances  on 
Easter  Sunday — to  Mary  Magdalene,  to  the  women,  to  Peter, 
to  Cleopas  and  his  companion,  and  to  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem, 
Thomas  being  absent — Jesus  appeared  again  to  the  disciples 
now  about  to  depart  to  Galilee,  Thomas  being  present ;  he  then 
led  them  out  to  the  Mount  of  Olives  where  he  was  separated 
from  them,  going  before  them,  though  now  unseen,  in  the 
way  to  Galilee.  On  this  journey  he  appeared  to  the  five  hun- 
dred; then  in  Galilee  to  the  sevenby  the  Sea,  and  finally  on  the 
mount  where  he  gave  commission  to  the  disciples  and  was  re- 
ceived up  into  heaven. ^^'^ 

The  plain  statements  of  the  Third  Gospel  and  of  Acts  op- 
pose this  construction,  and  the  transposition  of  the  restoration, 
of  Peter  from  the  place  assigned  to  it  in  Jno.  xxi  depends 
wholly  on  an  individual  sense  of  fitness.  The  view  of  Rig- 
genbach^^^  is  simpler  and  in  closer  accord  with  the  evidence. 
The  Jerusalem  appearances,  including  an  appearance  to  Peter 
and  the  appearance  to  the  disciples  after  eight  days, — Thomas 
being  present — were  followed  by  Galilean  appearances,  the  aj>- 
pearance  to  the  seven  by  the  Sea  including  the  restoration  of 
Peter,  and  the  appearance  on  the  mountain — identified  prob- 
ably with  the  appearance  to  the  five  hundred — and  finally  in 
Jerusalem  again,  the  appearance  to  James,  and  the  farewell 
appearance  terminated  by  the  ascension  from  the  Mount  of 
Olives  toward  Bethany.^^^ 

"■''Ibid.  pp.  74  ff.  '"  Cf.  ibid.  pp.  Ill  fif. 

^^*  Aus  Schrift  und  Geschichte,  pp.  151  ff. 

^^'On  the  double  tradition  cf.  Romberg,  NkZ.  1901,  pp.  315  ff.;  B.  Weiss, 
Leben  Jesu*  ii.  1902,  pp.  507  ff. ;  Beyschlag,  ThStKr.  1899,  pp.  507  ff. ;  Leben 
Jesu^  i.  1902,  pp.  433  ff. ;  Horn,  NkZ.  1902,  pp.  349  ff. ;  Abfassungzeit, 
Geschichtlichkeit  und  Zweck  von  Evang.  J  oh.  Kap.  21,  1904,  pp.  94  ff. ;  Bel- 
ser,  Geschichte  d.  Leidens  u.  Sterbens,  d.  Auferstehung  u.  Himmelfahrt  d. 
Herrn,  1903,  pp.  454  ff. ;  Wabnitz,  Hist,  de  la  Vie  de  Jesus,  1904,  pp.  408  ff. ; 
Sanday,  Outlines  of  the  Life  of  Christ,  1905,  pp.  170  ff,;  D.  Smith,  The 
Days  of  His  Flesh,  1905,  pp.  508  ff. ;  an  article  in  ChQuRev.  Oct.  1905- 
Jan.  1906,  pp.  323-355,  especially  pp.  347  ff. ;  Swete,  The  Appearances  of  our 
Lord,  etc.,  1907;  Westcott,  The  Gospel  according  to  St.  John,  1908,  ii.  pp. 


342 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


It  may  be  difficult  to  solve  in  detail  all  the  problems  which 
arise  on  this  general  view  of  the  relation  of  the  narratives; 
but  this  should  not  affect  our  confidence  in  its  validity.  There 
will  of  necessity  enter  into  every  reconstruction  of  the  course 
of  events  a  subjective  element  which  will  preclude  the  attain- 
ment of  more  than  a  certain  degree  of  probability.  Paul's 
account  is  favorable  to  the  tradition  which  locates  the  first  ap- 
pearances— including  the  appearance  to  Peter — in  Jerusalem 
and  on  Easter  Sunday;  but  the  identification  of  the  appear- 
ances which  he  mentions  with  particular  appearances  described 
in  the  Gospels  is  less  certain.  Judging  from  the  order  in  which 
the  appearance  to  James  occurs  in  his  list,^*^  the  place  assigned 
to  it  in  the  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews  cannot  be  his- 
torical.^*^ The  fact  however  underlies  and  explains  the  po- 
sition of  James  and  the  other  brethren  of  the  Lord  in  the  early 
Church.  ^*2  It  is  perhaps  more  natural  therefore,  as  the  Jeru- 
salem setting  seems  to  be  excluded,  to  locate  this  appearance  in 
Galilee. 

As  Paul  is  silent  about  the  appearances  to  the  women, 
knowledge  of  them  must  be  derived  from  the  Gospels.  The 
presence  of  women  at  the  sepulchre  on  Easter  morning  is 
witnessed  by  all  the  Gospels,^*^  and  appearances  of  Jesus  to 
them  by  two,' — an  appearance  to  Mary  Magdalene  at  the 
sepulchre  by  John,^**  and  an  appearance  to  certain  women  on 
their  way  from  the  sepulchre  by  Matthew. ^*^  As  John's  nar- 
rative is  the  more  graphic  and  the  Fourth  Gospel  elsewhere 
presupposes  knowledge  of  the  Synoptic  tradition,  the  appear- 
ance to  Mary  Magdalene  is  probably  to  be  separated  from  the 
appearance  to  the  women,  Mary  having  left  the  others  when 
she  went  to  bring  Peter  and  John  word  of  the  empty  tomb. 

333  f ;  J-  Orr,  The  Resurrection  of  Jesus,  1909,  pp.  149  ff;  E.  Mangenot, 
La  Resurrection  de  Jesus,  1910,  pp.  240  ff. ;  W.  J.  Sparrow  Simpson,  DCG. 
ii,  p.  508;  The  Resurrection  and  Modern  Thought,  191 1,  pp.  70  ff. 

**®  Kii}<f>$,  ToTs  SdSeKa^  iirdvu)  wevraKOfflois  dSeX^ots,  'IoKc6j3y. 

"*Cf.  Appendix,  p.  351,  I. 

*"Gal.  i.  19,  ii.  9,  12;  i  Cor.  ix.  5;  Acts  i.  14,  xii.  17,  xv.  13,  xxi.  18;  cf. 
Jno.  vii.  3,  5. 

^"Mt.  xxviii.  I  ff;  Mk.  xvi.  i  ff;  Lk.  xxiii.  55  f,  xxiv.  i  ff,  10  f,  22; 
Jno.  XX.  I  ff. 

***Jno.  XX.  I  ff.  ***Mt.  xxviii.  9-10. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  343 

Upon  her  return  and  after  the  departure  of  Peter  and  John, 
Jesus  appeared  to  her.  The  appearance  to  the  other  women^^^ 
followed  as  they  went  to  tell  to  the  disciples  the  message  of 
the  angel.  The  silence  of  the  women  as  they  left  the  sepul- 
chre^*''' cannot  have  continued  indefinitely;  for  Mark  shows 
knowledge  of  their  experience  and  Matthew  and  Luke  alike 
imply  the  breaking  of  what  must  have  been  a  temporary  state 
induced  by  fear.^*^  The  mingling  of  fear  and  joy^*^  in  their 
experience  is  not  incongruous,  nor  does  the  appearance  of 
Jesus  to  the  women  render  an  appearance  to  Peter  superfluous. 
This  may  well  have  served  the  purpose  of  reestablishing  Peter's 
faith  and  of  fitting  him  to  become  a  center  of  influence  in 
gathering  the  scattered  disciples  and,  eventually,  their  leader 
on  the  journey  back  to  Galilee:  for  the  Gospels  imply  the 
presence  of  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem  on  Easter  Sunday^^^  and 
their  scattering  at  Gethsemane^^^  cannot  have  been  a  "  flight 
to  Galilee  ". 

There  is  no  intimation  in  Luke  that  Cleopas  and  his  com- 
panion were  on  their  way  to  Galilee;  and  the  isolated  allu- 
sion to  Emmaus  is  plainly  indicative  of  authentic  reminis- 


"'Mk.  xvi.  I  Miary  Magdalene,  Mary  [the  mother]  of  James,  and 
Salome;  Lk.  xxiv.  10  Mary  Magdalene,  Joanna,  Mary  [the  mother]  of 
James,  and  the  others  with  them. 

'"  Mk.  xvi.  8. 

^*^  Mt.  xxviii.  8  ff ;  Lk.  xxiv.  9,  22  f . 

^**Mt.  xxviii.  8;  cf.  the  description  of  the  mental  state  of  the  disciples 

in  Lk.  xxiv.  37  ^^^  4I  •  VTorjdivres  Sk  Kal  e/Mpo^oi  yevS/jiepoi  .  .  .  en  8^  6.Tri<TToivT(av 
aiiTuv  dirb  rijs  x^pas  Kal  davfw'^bvrujv  kt\. 

^""  After  the  scattering  at  Gethsemane  the  presence  of  the  disciples  in  or 
near  Jerusalem  is  implied  in  Mt.  xxviii.  7  f .,  10  f . ;  Mk.  xvi.  7 ;  Lk.  xxiii. 
49  {ol  yvuaTol  airrip)-,  xxiv.  9  f.,  24,  33  ff. ;  Jno.  XX.  18,  19  ff. ;  the  presence  of 
Peter  in  Mt.  xxvi.  57  ff. ;  Mk.  xiv.  53  ff. ;  Lk.  xxii.  54  ff. ;  xxiv.  [12],  34; 
Jno.  xviii.  15  ff.,  25  ff,,  xx.  3  ff . ;  of  John  in  Jno.  xviii.  15  f,,  xix.  26  f , 
XX.  3  ff. 

"*The  scattering  of  the  disciples  is  witnessed  by  Mt.  xxvi.  56;  Mk.  xiv. 
50,  and  was  predicted  in  Mt.  xxvi.  31;  Mk.  xiv.  27;  Jno.  xvi.  32;  cf. 
Justin,  Apol.  i.  50;  Dial.  53;  106;  see  above  note  38. 

^"  On  the  location  cf .  Schiirer,  Gesch.  d.  jiid.  Volkes  usw.  i.  pp.  640  ff. ;  on 
the  similarity  of  the  narrative  with  Acts  viii.  26-40  and  possible  deriva- 
tion from  the  family  of  Philip  cf.  M.  Dibelius,  ZNW.  191 1,  p.  329. 


344  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

An  appearance  to  the  disciples  in  Jerusalem^^^  seems  to  be 
implied  in  Matthew. ^'^^  Luke  describes  an  appearance  to  the 
disciples  and  others  as  occurring  late  on  the  evening  of  Easter 
Sunday,  after  the  return  of  Cleopas  and  his  companion.  This 
is  probably  identical  with  the  appearance  to  the  Twelve,  which 
follows  the  appearance  to  Peter  in  Paul's  list,  and  with  the  ap- 
pearance to  the  disciples  when  Thomas  was  absent,  which  is 
recorded  by  John.^'* 

The  hesitation  or  doubt  of  some  when  they  heard  the  story 
of  the  women^^®  and  witnessed  or  learned  gf  an  appearance^^'' 
shows  a  desire  for  tangible,  sensible  evidence  which  was  not 
unnatural  under  the  circumstances  and  is  not  an  indication  of 
a  late  stage  in  the  development  of  Gospel  tradition.  Its  exag- 
geration in  later  narratives^^^  may  have  had  an  apologetic  or 
an  antidocetic  motive,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  question  its  ex- 
istence. Its  duration  in  individuals  can  be  fixed  if  definitely 
indicated, ^^^  but  its  presence  is  not  in  itself  proof  of  an  initial 
experience.  Those  who  doubted  on  the  mountain  in  Galilee 
may  have  been  among  the  disciples  to  whom  Jesus  had  already 
appeared ;  but  it  is  quite  possible  that  Matthew  in  following  a 
source^^^  has  mentioned  the  Eleven  specifically  as  present  for 
the  purpose  of  reporting  the  carrying  out  of  Jesus'  direction 
and  the  fulfilment  of  his  promise,  without  noting  the  presence 
of  others.  Certainly  the  whole  incident  cannot  be  assigned  to 
an  earlier  period  on  the  ground  of  Matthew's  unwillingness 
to  record  the  doubts  of  the  disciples. ^^^ 

'"Lk.  xxiv.  36  ff. 

"*  Mt.  xxviii,  16  (o5  ird^ro  avrois)  . 

"*  I  Cor.  XV.  5 ;  Jno.  xx.  19  flf. 

^"Lk.  xxiv.  II. 

"'Mt.  xxviii.  17;  Lk.  xxiv.  37;  Jno.  xx.  24  ff. 

"*  [Mk.]  xvi.  II,  14  ff,  the  addition  in  the  Freer  Ms. — cf.  Gregory,  Das 
Freer  Logion,  1908 — and  the  Coptic  Document;  cf.  Appendix,  p.  352,  III. 

^'•Jno.  XX.  26  ff. 

***  In  xxviii.  17  ol  Si  is  introduced  abruptly  and  the  o5  ird^aro  avrois  is  not 
adequately  grounded  in  the  preceding  context.  Likewise  in  verse  9  the 
antecedent  of  ain-ah  is  Mapih/i  i]  Mo75oX77»'77  Kal  ij  SXKri  Map/a(  verse  I ) ,  although 
it  seems  probable  that  Mary  Magdalene  was  not  actually  present  on  this 
occasion. 

*"  Cf .  above  p.  336. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  345 

Jesus'  promise  before  his  death,  repeated  in  the  message  of 
the  angel  and  of  Jesus  to  the  women,  that  he  would  "  go  be- 
fore his  disciples  into  Galilee  "  seems  to  imply  personal  leader- 
ship rather  than  temporal  precedence  or  prior  arrival. ^^^  The 
changed  form  of  the  message  in  Luke,^^^  even  if  it  be  based 
on  Mark,  is  intended  to  introduce  another  feature,  to  doubt 
the  authenticity  of  which  there  is  no  other  ground  than  the 
suspicion  that  Luke  begins  at  this  point  an  unhistorical  elimi- 
nation of  the  Galilean  appearances.  But  this  elimination  is 
unhistorical  in  Luke,  as  the  elimination  of  the  Jerusalem  ap- 
pearance to  the  disciples  is  unhistorical  in  Matthew,  only  when 
the  narratives  are  held  to  be  exclusive  of  facts  which  they  do 
not  record.  Luke's  narrative  is  plainly  determined  by  interest 
in  the  Jerusalem  appearances.  It  is  greatly  condensed. 
Whether  or  not  it  be  possible  to  show  that  Luke's  source  con- 
tained an  account  of  Galilean  appearances,  some  break  in  the 
temporal  order ^^^  is  demanded  in  the  interest  of  a  rational  in- 
terpretation of  the  closing  scene.  Luke  cannot  have  meant^^^ 
or  intended  his  readers  to  think  of  Jesus'  final  separation  from 
the  disciples  as  occurring  late  at  night.  And  if  such  a  break 
be  admitted,  the  words  of  Jesus  bidding  the  disciples  "  tarry 

"^  Mt.  xxvi.  32  ;  Mk.  xiv.  28  :  irpod^co  vficis  els  rriv  TaXiXaiav;  cf.  Mt.  xxviii. 
7;  Mk.  xvi.  7  (TTpodyei).  This  interpretation  is  commended  both  by  the 
context  of  the  original  promise  and  by  the  usage  in  Mk.  x.  32 :  ^aav  8^  ip  r^ 
bhQ  ava^aivovres  eh  'lepocrSXvfjLa,  Kal  ^v  irpodyuv  avroifs  6  'iriaovs  kt\  ,  Cf .  also  Mt. 
ii.  9,  xxi.  9;  Mk.  xi.  9;  Lk.  xviii.  39;  Acts  xii.  6,  xvi.  30;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  Mt.  xiv.  22;  Mk.  vi.  45;  Mt.  xxi.  31. 

^*^  xxiv.  6 :  fiPT^<r6r]Te  ws  iXdXrjffev  vfup  en  up  ip  rrj  TaKiKaig.  \4yiop  top  vibp  tov 
dpOpdirov  8tl  8ei  TrapadoOrjpai  ktX. 

"*  Either  after  verse  43, 45,  or  48 ;  cf .  Plummer,  St.  Luke,  ICC.  pp.  561,  564. 

"°  This  follows  not  only  from  a  careful  examination  of  Lk.  xxiv  but 
from  the  definite  statement  in  Acts  i.  3  that  the  appearances  continued 
during  forty  days.  To  those  who  admit  the  Lukan  authorship  of  the 
Third  Gospel  and  Acts  this  should  be  conclusive,  even  if  the  consequences 
do  not  contribute  to  the  stability  of  the  Galilean  theory  of  the  appearances. 
Harnack  however  having  characteristized  the  "  forty  days "  as  a  myth 
{Apostelgeschichte ,  1908,  p.  129)  is  disposed  to  admit  its  early  origin 
[uralt]  only  as  a  messianic-apocalyptic  theologoumenon  (Neue  Unter- 
suchungen  sur  Apostelgeschichte,  191 1,  pp.  113  f).  For  a  different  view  of 
the  "  forty  days  " — by  which  the  appearance  to  Peter  is  dated — cf.  B.  W. 
Bacon,  AJTh.  191 1,  p.  402. 


346       THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES 

in  the  city  "  ^°®  will  not  exclude  the  appearances  in  Galilee 
which  are  implied  in  Mark  and  recorded  in  Matthew  and  John. 

Following  the  appearance  on  the  eighth  day  after  Easter,^®'' 
the  disciples  went  to  Galilee.  The  appearance  to  the  seven  by 
the  Sea  probably  preceded  the  appearance  on  the  mountain. ^®® 
The  fishing  scene  may  imply  in  the  Gospel  of  Peter  the  taking 
up  again  of  an  old  occupation  in  the  despondency  and  despair 
which  followed  the  dissipation  of  cherished  hopes  ;^^®  but  such 
an  interpretation  of  it  is  excluded  in  John.  The  disciples  are 
in  Galilee  at  Jesus'  command — as  John  and  his  readers  would 
know  from  Matthew^^^ — and  they  could  libt  have  been  in  de- 
spair of  Jesus'  cause  in  the  thought  either  of  the  author  or  of 
the  reader  of  Jno.  xx.  The  commission  of  Peter  which  is  con- 
nected with  this  incident,  like  the  commission  of  the  disci- 
ples,^^^  is  not  necessarily  connected  either  logically  or  tem- 
porally with  the  first  experience  of  an  appearance  of  Jesus. 
The  author  of  Jno.  xxi  not  only  felt  no  incongruity  in  the 
order  but  specifically  calls  this  the  third  time  that  Jesus  ap- 
peared to  his  disciples.  To  insist  that  it  must  have  been  the 
first  because  the  author  calls  it  the  third  is  arbitrary  ;^'''2  and 
there  is  no  adequate  literary  justification  for  the  separation  of 
the  two  incidents  of  this  scene. 

The  identification  of  the  appearance  to  the  five  hundred 
with  the  appearance  to  the  Eleven  on  the  mountain  in  Galilee 
and  of  that  to  all  the  disciples — in  Paul's  list — with  the  final 
appearance  in  Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  the  ascension  from  the 
Mount  of  Olives  toward  Bethany  is  both  natural  and  highly 
probable. 

Of  the  three  views  concerning  the  place  of  the  appearances 
the  Jerusalem  theory  has  least  to  commend  it  and  the  evidence 

"•xxiv.  49;  cf.  Acts  i.  4. 

*•*  Jno.  XX.  26  ff. 

^^  Cf.  Jno.  xxi.  14 :  tovto  ijSrj  rplrov  icpavepddr}  'Ir]<rovf  rots  fMdrjrais  iyepOels  iK 
veKpQv. 

"^  Cf .  above  p.  333. 

"°On  the  relation  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  to  the  Synoptic  Gospels  cf. 
Zahn,  Einleitung,  ii.  pp.  507  ff.. 

"*Mt.  xxviii.   18  ff. 

'"Cf.  Lyder  Brun,  ThStKr.  191 1,  p.  167. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  347 

against  it  is  clear  and  convincing.  For  this  and  other  reasons 
the  GaHlean  theory  is  generally  considered  the  critical  alter- 
native to  the  double  tradition.  It  is  however  closely  associated 
with  the  "  flight  to  Galilee  "  theory ;  and  this  is  contrary  to  the 
historical  evidence.  Even  the  Gospel  of  Peter  represents  the 
disciples  as  present  in  Jerusalem  until  the  end  of  the  feast,  and 
certainly  therefore  until  the  third  day,  if  not  longer.  This 
being  true,  it  is  impossible  to  hold  against  all  the  evidence  ex- 
cept the  Gospel  of  Peter  that  the  journey  to  Galilee  was  made 
in  ignorance  of  the  empty  tomb  and  the  message  of  the  angel. 
The  transfer  to  Galilee  of  the  appearance  to  Peter — recorded 
by  Luke  in  a  Jerusalem  setting — is  arbitrary  and  made  in  the 
interest  of  the  general  theory.  This  theory  moreover  is  not 
adequately  supported  by  inference  from  Mark,  by  the  hypothet- 
ical contents  of  the  lost  ending  of  Mark,  by  the  Gospel  of 
Peter,  and  by  a  critical  transformation  of  Jno.  xxi.  Its  treat- 
ment of  the  Gospels  as  literary  embodiments  of  a  twofold, 
but  mutually  exclusive  tradition,  is  supported  indeed  by  the 
affirmation  of  axiomatic  validity  for  its  own  historical  premise, 
but  this  only  discloses  the  intrusion  of  an  unsound  skepticism 
between  the  interpreter  and  his  sources, ^"^^  the  deepest  roots  of 
which  are  not  historical  but  philosophical.  The  close  associa- 
tion of  this  theory  with  the  interpretation  of  the  appearances 
as  visionary  experiences — ^whether  objectively  or  subjectively 
occasioned — is  of  course  not  accidental.  ^"^^  Its  bearing  on  the 
resurrection  itself  and  the  transformation  of  Christianity, 
which  the  elimination  of  this  element  from  its  historic  faith 
involves,  are  not  concealed. 

The  theory  that  maintains  the  validity  of  the  double  tradi- 
tion offers  an  explanation  of  the  documentary  evidence  by  at- 

"'Cf.  J.  Weiss,  Jesus  von  Nazareth,  Mythus  oder  Geschichte,  1910,  pp. 
84  f.  This  attitude  toward  the  sources  is  not  confined  to  the  radical  type 
of  criticism ;  and  Weiss'  statement  is  made  in  a  form  broadly  applicable 
to  contemporary  historical  method ;  cf .  also  p.  93. 

"*  Kreyenbiihl's  repudiation  and  criticism  of  the  vision  hypothesis  is 
interesting  but  not  significant,  for  his  own  theory  of  the  psychological 
genesis  of  the  resurrection  faith  in  the  triumph  of  the  messianic-apocalyp- 
tic idea  over  popular  ghost-fear  is  equally  naturalistic  and  opposed  to  the 
plain  implications  of  the  historical  sources  (ZNIV.  1908,  pp.  27s  ff)  ;  cf. 
J.  A.  Cramer,  ThT.  1910,  p.  213. 


348 


THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 


tempting  an  interpretation  of  it  in  accordance  with  the  prem 
ises  of  the  documents.  Both  Paul  and  the  primitive  Christian 
community  beheved  that  Jesus  rose  from  the  dead  and  that  he 
appeared  to  certain  persons.  The  records  of  fact  underlying 
this  belief  are  consistent  in  regard  to  its  essential  features, 
though  no  one  of  them  attempts  to  set  forth  the  different  ele- 
ments in  their  various  relations.  Concrete  events  have  in- 
fluenced the  narratives,  but  here  as  elsewhere  the  Gospels  are 
not  dominated  by  the  modern  interest  in  exact  sequence  in  time 
or  minute  local  description.  They  recor<J  enough  to  make 
their  witness  quite  plain  in  its  broad  aspects  and  not  intract- 
able to  a  constructive  treatment  which  shares  their  premises. 
But  when  these  premises  are  rejected,  the  effort  to  discover  a 
different  factual  basis  for  the  belief  which  the  documents  re- 
flect necessarily  results  in  a  treatment  of  the  sources,  the  vio- 
lence of  which  is  less  apparent  but  not  justified  because  it 
forms  part  of  a  particular  theory  of  the  character  and  develo|> 
ment  of  early  Christianity.^'''^ 

The  method  which  treats  the  Gospel  narratives  as  supple- 
mentary^"^*^ — the  so-called  "  method  of  addition  "■ — yields  a  re- 
sult that  fairly  interprets  and  is  supported  by  the  objective 
evidence  of  the  documents.  With  the  increasing  recognition 
of  the  evidence  for  the  early  date  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels, 
their  sources, — of  whatever  kind  and  constitution — being  still 
earlier, — carry  back  the  witness  of  the  documents  to  the  time  of 
the  eye-witnesses.  And  among  these  there  was  no  difference 
of  opinion  concerning  the  factual  basis  which  underlies  the 
tradition  recorded  by  the  Gospels  in  concrete  and  varying 
forms.  To  admit  with  Harnack  that  the  Gospel  of  Luke  was 
written  before  70  A.D.  and  early  in  the  sixties,^^^  is  to  accept 
a  fact  which  has  an  important  bearing  on  the  origin  of  the 
sources  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels, — a  fact  which  makes  it  diffi- 
cult, as  Harnack  himself  foresaw, ^^^  to  regard  as  legendary 
their  accounts  of  supernatural  events.    For  if  the  Gospels  em- 

"»Cf.  B.  B.  Warfield,  AJTh.  1911,  pp.  337  ff.,  546  ff.,  and  J.  A.  Cramer, 
ThT.  1910,  pp.  217  fif. 
"'Barth,  Hauptprohleme  d.   Lehens  Jesu*  1903,  p.  218. 
"^  Neue  Untersuchungen  zur  Apostelgeschichte,  pp.  81  ff. 
^"'^  Die  Apostelgeschichte,  p.  221,  n.  2. 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  349 

body  the  view  of  Jesus  which  was  current  in  the  primitive 
Christian  community  about  60  A.D. — as  Heitmiiller  admits^^^ 
— or  earher — as  Harnack's  dating  of  Luke  requires^ — the  re- 
jection of  their  witness  cannot  be  based  upon  their  differences 
or  upon  purely  historical  considerations.  Recourse  must  be 
had  to  a  principle  springing  ultimately  out  of  philosophical 
conceptions  by  which  their  unanimous  witness  to  essential  fea- 
tures in  their  portraiture  of  Jesus  may  be  set  aside. ^^^  It  is  not 
strange  therefore  that  this  type  of  Gospel  criticism  finds  itself 
confronted  by  a  still  more  radical  type^^^  against  which  it  can 
with  difficulty  defend  the  historical  minimum  permitted  by  its 
premises. ^^2  And  this  only  raises  more  acutely  the  issue  con- 
cerning the  validity  of  the  premises  upon  which  an  attitude 

^'*  Cf .   the  following  note, 

"•*  Cf,  the  principle  formulated  and  applied  to  the  Gospels  by  Schmiedel 
in  EB.  ii,  col,  1839-1896,  and  more  recently  by  Heitmiiller  in  DGG.  iii. 
191 1,  pp.  359-362,  After  pointing  out  that  the  earliest  sources  of  the  Synop- 
tic Gospels  do  not  go  back  of  but  reflect  merely  the  view  of  Jesus  which 
was  current  in  the  Palestinian  community  from  50-70  and  formulating  as 
the  canon  of  historical  trustworthiness  the  generally  accepted  [allgemein 
anerkannten]  principle  of  contradiction — that  those  elements  of  Gospel 
tradition  may  be  accepted  as  surely  trustworthy  which  are  not  in  accord 
with  the  faith  of  the  community  to  which  the  general  representation  be- 
longs— Heitmiiller  says  (p,  361)  :  Our  scrupulousness  [Skrupulositat,  or 
Bedenken  (p,  377),  or  Vorsicht  (p.  396)]  "must  be  especially  active 
against  all  the  things  that  were  especially  dear  to  the  early  Christians ;  to 
which  belong  the  faith  in  Jesus'  Messiahship,  his  near  return,  the  whole 
subject  of  so-called  eschatology  (kingdom  of  God),  the  passion  and  resur- 
rection, and  the  miraculous  power  of  Jesus ;  where  the  heart  and  the  theol- 
ogy or  the  apologetic  of  the  early  Christians  were  especially  interested, 
an  influence  on  historical  tradition  or  construction  must  be  feared";  cf. 
also  an  exposition  of  the  "  setiological "  principle  or  the  "  method  of 
pragmatic  values  "  by  B,  W.  Bacon,  HThR.  1908,  pp,  48  ff. — privately  en- 
dorsed by  Harnack,  cf,  AJTh.  191 1,  p,  374,  n,  4 — and  JBL.  1910,  i,  pp. 
4iff;  and  the  theory  of  the  "  messianisation  "  "of  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus 
in  Bowen,  Resurrection  in  NT.  pp,  402  ff.,  421  ff.,  439,  On  the  other  hand 
cf,  the  acute  criticism  of  the  literary  and  historical  methods  which  char- 
acterize this  point  of  view  by  Franz  Dibelius,  Das  Abendmahl,  191 1,  pp.  i  ff. 

''"  Kalthoff,  J,  M.  Robertson,  W.  B.  Smith,  Jensen,  A.  Drews,  etc. 

^*^  Cf,  Bousset,  Was  wissen  wir  von  Jesus,  1904;  ThR.  191 1,  pp,  37$  ff, ; 
J.  Weiss,  Jesus  von  Nazareth,  Mythus  oder  Geschichte,  1910;  a  review  of 
Weiss  by  B.  B,  Warfield  in  PrThR.  191 1,  pp.  332  ff. ;  M.  Dibelius  in  ThLz. 
1910,  pp.  545  ff. ;  Windisch  in  ThR.  1910,  p,  163  ff,,  199  ff , ;  1911,  pp.  114  ff. 


3SO  THE  RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES 

of  distrust  toward  the  early  Christian  view  of  Jesus  as  re- 
corded in  the  Gospels  and  embodied  in  the  earliest  sources 
which  they  incorporate  is  maintained.  But  if  the  early  Chris- 
tian view  of  Jesus  be  true  in  its  essential  features — and  it  is 
attested  by  all  the  historical  evidence — it  may  confidently  be 
expected  that  the  totality  of  the  Gospel  witness  in  its  concrete 
details  will  come  into  its  rights,  which  are  the  rights — as  its 
witness  is  true— of  Jesus,  the  Christ,  who  by  his  resurrection 
and  appearances  became  the  author  of  Christian  faith  at  the 
inception  of  the  Church's  life,  and  who  is  sdll  the  ever  living 
source  of  faith,  the  Lord  of  life  and  glory. 

199  flf. ;  A.  Drews,  Die  Christusmythe,  ii.  191 1 — Ein  Antufort  an  die  Schrift- 
gelehrten  usw. ;  Holtzmann,  PrM.  1900,  pp.  463  ff. ;  1907,  pp.  313  flf,;  ChrW. 
1910,  pp.  151  ff. ;  Case,  AJTh.  191 1,  pp.  20  ff.,  205  ff.,  265  ff.;  The  Histori- 
city of  Jesus,  1912. 


THE   RESURRECTIOX   APPEARANXES  351 


APPENDIX. 

I.  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews:  Hieronymus,  Liber  m;  vntis 
iNLUSTRiBus,  Gebhardt  il  Hamack,  TU.  xiv.  1896,  p.  8. 

*  Dominus  autem  cum  dedisset  sindonem  servo  sacerdotis,  ivit  ad 
lacobum  et  apparuit  ei ',  (iuraverat  enim  lacobus  se  non  comesurum  panem 
ab  ilia  hora  qua  biberat  calicem  Domini,  donee  videret  eum  resurgentem  a 
dormientibus)  rursusque  post  paululum,  '  Adferte,  ait  Dominus,  mensam  et 
panem ',  statimque  additur :  *  Tulit  panem  et  benedixit  et  f regit  et  dedit 
lacobo  lusto  et  dixit  ei :  *  Frater  mi,  comede  panem  tuum,  quia  resur- 
rexit  Filius  hominis  a  dormientibus'. 

Cf.  I  Cot.  XV.  7.  The  secondary  character  of  this  narrative  is  plain 
even  if  "  dominus "  be  read  with  the  Greek  translation  ( 6  nJptos)  for 
"  domini "  in  the  clause  "  qua  biberat  calicem  " ;  cf.  Lightfoot,  St,  Paul's 
Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  1892,  p.  274;  Hamack,  Gesch.  d.  altchr.  Lit.  bis 
Euseb.  i.  i,  p.  8;  ii.  i,  p.  650  n.  i;  Resch,  Agrapha*  Gebhardt  u.  Hamack, 
TU.  NF.  XV.  3-4,  1906,  pp.  248  flf;  Handmann,  Das  Hebraer-Evangelium, 
1888,  pp.  77  ff.;  Schmidtke,  Neue  Fragmente  u.  Untersuchungen  z.  d. 
jUdenchr.  Evangelien,  Hamack  u.  Schmidt,  TU.  3.  Reihe,  vii.  i,  191 1,  p. 
37 ;  on  the  other  hand  cf.  Zahn,  Gesch.  d.  nt.  Kanons,  ii.  pp.  700  Q. ;  For- 
schungen,  \\.  1900,  p.  277;  W.  Bauer,  Leben  Jesu  usw.  p.  164;  Bowen, 
Resurrection  in  NT.  p.  424  n,  2. 

II.  Gospel  of  Peter:  Klostermann,  Apocrypha*  Lietzmann,  KIT.  3, 
1908,  pp.  7  f. 

xii  50  "OpOpov  Si  T^s  Kvpuucjjs  Maptd/i  r)  Ma75aXT7»Tj,  fta&ifyrpui  rdu  Kvptov  {[Iji] 
<f>oPovfuni  5tA  rods  'lovSalom,  ireiSi}  i^X^yorro  inro  rip  dpyiji^  ouk  iroltfaep  hci  r(p 
fir^fuiTi  rod  Kvplov  A  eidjdeaaw  iroieiv  ai  yvwaiKes  trl  rots  droOtrjaKoiHri  rots  koi  ccYaroffUr- 
ots  awTttts)  ^'  Xo^wTtt  fie6^  eavriji  rdtj  <plXas  lyX^f  hri  rb  firtifietdp  Swov  Ijv  redeli.  **  jccu 
hpo^wrro  /it}  fSdNrir  avrds  o2  'lovdaibt  koX  tKeyov  "  et  koX  11^  iw  iKelrrj  ry  VM^n  V 
iirravp<i$ri  iSvr^&rifi£v  jcXautrot  icot  K^^our^eu,  ic<li'  ww  irl  rod  fur^fULTos  avroS  roirfyrwfieir 
TttUTO.  **  ris  di  droKvXiaei  rjfup  koX  tow  \t0op  t6p  reOirra  irl  rip  06pa$  rod  finffjuelov^ 
ira  eiffeXdowau  rapojcadeadufiev  avr(p  Koi  roi-^ta/jiep  rd  64>ei\6fura  ;  ^  fUyas  yap  ^r  6 
XWos,  Koi  (po^ovfjueda  /tij  Tts  ij/mi  ISti.  koi  el  fiij  5vrdfie0a,  kSlw  iri  rip  dipas  pdXufjuev  i. 
<t)ipoiuv  as  furfiiioavniv a.^cu^KaX\  Kkojuffiapew  xaX  KO^I/(S)fie0a  ?a»  fkOufiev  et;  rbp  oIkov  tj/jluv.'''' 
xiii  55  Kol  iircXBovffai  ebpov  top  rdipov  -^wcf^fi^vov  /cat  irpoaeXdwacu  -rapiicvrpav  ixeij 
Kcd  bpSxriP  iK€i  Tipa  p&irurKow  KoBe^bpevov  \iv\  p^trtp  rod  Td<pov  wpaiov  Kal  repi^^Xrf- 
piwov  OToXifr  Xap-rpordrriry  Saris  fifyt)  a&rais'  *  "  ri  ijk9aT€  ;  riva  ^ifretre ;  p.i}  rSr 
OTavpb/dirra  ^iretvor ;  dw4imj  jcat  dicriXdev  el  Si  p,ii  rurrevere^  rapcucOrf/are  Kal  tSere  rbr 
T&rop  ewda  eKeiro,  8ri  ovk  eartp-  dpimi  ydp  Koi  dr^XBew  ixei  Sdev  dreaTaXri.'''  ^''  r&re 
ai  yvpouKes  <f>o^ri$€itrcu  e<pvyop. 

xiv  58  Hf  5c  reXevrala  ijpdpa  tup  d^puap^  Koi  voXXol  tipg  ^fytxorro  inro<rrpi<popres 
ets  TOJ>s  oTrous  avrup  ttjs  iopTiji  ravcapAprp.  ^  ^Ai£(S  Sk  oi.  Su>S€Ka  paBrfTol  tov  Kvplov 
ixXaJopjEP  Kal  iXirroupeOa^  Kai  I^Katrros  Xirrovptpos  Sid  rb  avpfidp  drriXXdyr}  els  Tbp  oIkop 
airov.  ^  iyd  Se  'Lipuup  Hirpos  Kai  ' KpSpias  6  dSeXipits  pov  Xa/36rres  itpjlap  t4  Mnt 
dir^XBapep  els  tt]p  ddXatr<rap-  koI  ^p  ai>p  r}p2p  Acvcts  6  tov  'AX^taiov^  Sp  K^pios.     .     .     . 


352       THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES 

III.  Coptic  Document:  translated  from  Schmidt,  SAB.  1895,  pp.  707  i- 
"  Mary,  Martha  and  Mary  Magdelene  go  to  the  grave  to  anoint  the  body. 

Finding  the  grave  empty,  they  are  sorrowful  and  weep.  The  Lord  ap- 
pears to  them  and  says:  'Why  do  ye  weep,  cease  weeping,  I  am  [he] 
whom  ye  seek.  But  let  one  of  you  go  to  your  brethren  and  say :  *  Come, 
the  Master  is  risen  from  the  dead.'  Martha  went  and  told  it  to  us.  We 
spake  to  her :  '  What  hast  thou  to  do  with  us,  O  woman  ?  He  who  died 
is  buried  and  it  is  not  possible  that  he  lives.'  We  did  not  believe  her, 
that  the  Redeemer  was  risen  from  the  dead.  Then  went  she  to  the  Lord 
and  spake  to  him :  *  None  among  them  believe  me,  that  thou  livest.'  He 
spake :  *  Let  another  of  you  go  to  them  and  tell  it  to  them  again.'  Mary 
went  and  told  it  to  us  again,  and  we  did  not  believe  her.  She  returned 
to  the  Lord,  and  she  likewise  told  it  to  him.  Then  said  the  Lord  to  Mary 
and  her  other  sisters :  '  Let  us  go  to  them.'  And  he  went  and  found 
us  within  and  called  us  outside.  But  we  thought  that  it  was  a  spirit 
{<f>avTa<rla)  and  believed  not,  that  it  was  the  Lord.  Then  spake  he  to 
us:  'Come  and  .  .  .  Thou,  O  Peter,  who  hast  denied  his  [Preuschen, 
<me>]  thrice,  and  dost  thou  deny  even  now?'  We  drew  near  to  him, 
doubting  in  our  hearts  that  perhaps  it  might  not  be  he.  Then  spake  he  to 
us:  'Why  do  you  still  doubt  and  are  unbelieving?  I  am  he  who  spake  to 
you  about  my  flesh  and  my  death  and  my  resurrection,  that  ye  might  know 
that  I  am  he.  Peter,  lay  thy  finger  in  the  nail-prints  in  my  hands,  and 
thou  Thomas  lay  thy  finger  in  the  spear-thrust  in  my  side,  but  do  thou 
Andrew  touch  my  feet,  thus  thou  seest  that  she  ...  to  those  of  earth. 
For  it  is  written  in  the  prophet,  '  fantacies  of  dreams  ...  on  earth.'  We 
answered  him :  '  We  have  recognized  in  truth,  that  ...  in  the  flesh.' 
And  we  cast  ourselves  on  our  face[s]  and  confessed  our  sins  that  we 
had  been  unbelieving." 

Schmidt  (SAB.  1908,  p.  1055)  thinks  that  the  author  of  the  Greek 
original  knew  the  passage  in  Ignatius  ad  Smyrn.  iii :  ^7<^  y^P  xal  furk  t^v 
dpdffTaaiv  iv  aapKl  airrbp  otSa  Kal  iriaTeixa  Svra.  Kal  Sre  rp6s  toi)s  nepl  U&rpov  fiXdeVy 
i<f>7)  avToTs-  Xd/3eT€,  ^rjXaip'^craTi  fie  Kal  tdere,  8ti  o^k  ei/xl  dai/idviov  dxribfiarov.  Kal 
fudOs  avTov  ifi\pavTO  Kal  iirUrTevaav,  Kpad^yres  ry  aapKl  avrov  Kal  tcJj  irvev/iaTi  (of. 
ad  Trail,  ix).  Cf.  also  Hier.  de  vir.  ill.  xvi ;  Schmidt,  SAB.  1908, 
pp.  1047-1056  and  ThLz.  1910,  p.  796;  Harnack,  Theologische  Studien 
B.  Weiss  dargehracht,  pp.  1-8;  A.  Meyer,  Auferstehung  usw,  pp. 
81  f. ;  M.  R.  James,  JThSt.  1909-10,  pp.  loi,  290,  569;  1910-11,  pp.  55  f . ;  D. 
P.  Bihlmeyer,  RBd.  191 1,  pp.  270  ff;  Hennecke,  Neutest.  Apokryphen, 
pp.  38  f;  Preuschen,  Antilegomena,  pp.  83  f;  W.  Bauer,  Lehen  Jesu  usw. 
p.  262. 

IV.  The  Syriac  Didascalia:  translated  from  Achelis  und  Flemming 
in  Gebhardt  u.  Harnack,  TU.  NF.  x.  1904,  p.  107. 

"  Because  then  these  days  and  nights  were  short,  therefore  it  is  written 
thus    [in   the   Old   Testament   quotation    which   precedes].     In   the   night 


THE   RESURRECTION   APPEARANCES  353 

therefore,  as  Sunday  was  breaking,  he  appeared  to  Mary  Magdalene  and 
Mary  the  daughter  of  James,  and  in  the  morning-dawn  of  Sunday  he  en- 
tered into  [the  house  of]  Levi,  and  then  he  appeared  also  to  us." 

The  account  of  the  appearances  follows  an  explanation  of  the  manner  in 
which  the  word  of  Jesus  in  Mt,  xii.  40 — the  Son  Man  must  be  three  days 
in  the  heart  of  the  earth — was  fulfilled ;  afterwards  Jesus  gives  instructions 
concerning  fasting. 

V.  Tertullian,  Apologeticum,  XXI :    Oehler,  i.  pp.  201  ff. 

Ad  doctrinam  vero  eius,  qua  revincebantur  magistri  primoresque  ludaeo- 
rum,  ita  exasperabantur,  maxime  quod  ingens  ad  eum  multitudo  deflecteret, 
ut  postremo  oblatum  Pontio  Pilato,  Syriam  tunc  ex  parte  Romana  pro- 
curanti,  violentia  suffragiorum  in  crucem  lesum  dedi  sibi  extorserint  .  .  . 
Sed  ecce  tertia  die  concussa  repente  terra,  et  mole  revoluta  quae  obstruxe- 
rat  sepulchrum,  et  custodia  pavore  disiecta,  nullis  apparentibus  disci- 
pulis  nihil  in  sepulchro  repertum  est  praeterquam  exuviae  sepulti  .  .  . 
Nam  nee  ille  se  in  vulgus  eduxit,  ne  impii  errore  liberarentur,  ut  et  fides, 
non  mediocri  praemio  destinata,  difficultate  constaret.  Cum  discipulis 
autem  quibusdam  apud  Galilaeam,  ludseae  regionem,  ad  quadraginta  dies 
egit  docens  eos  quae  docerent.  Dehinc  ordinatis  eis  ad  officium  praedi- 
candi  per  orbem  circumfusa  nube  in  caelum  est  receptus  ...  Ea  omnia 
super  Christo  Pilatus,  et  ipse  iam  pro  sua  conscientia  Christianus,  Caesari 
tunc  Tiberio  nuntiavit. 

VI.  Acta  Pilati  :    Tischendorf,  Evangelia  Apocrypha^  1876. 

B  XV.  5  (p.  321)  ^<f>r]  irpbs  airovs  o'luxri^tp-  Karh  rijv  ea-iripap  ttjs  irapotr/cev^j,  Sre 
fie  iv  (pvXuKy  KaT7](r<pa\l<raT€,  cireaov  eis  irpoaevx^v  Si  6\r]i  rrjs  wkt6s  Kal  81  SKrjs  riji 
■ilixipas  Tov  (ra^^drov.  Kal  rod  fjueaovvKriov  bpG>  rbv  oJkov  r^s  tpvXaKTJs  Sri  ialKuxrap 
airrhv  &yye\oi  Ti<T<Tape%,  dirb  tu>v  reaadpuv  yoviuv  /car^oyres  airrhv.  Kal  eiarfKdev  6 
'lr](Tovs  w$  dtTTpairi^,  Kal  dirb  rov  06j8oi;  ^iretrov  els  rijv  yijv.  Kparijaas  oiv  ne  rijs  x"P^5 
ijyeipe  \4yuv  /xi}  (po^ov,  'IwcriJ^.  elra  irepiXafidjv  KaTe(pl\'t\<Ti  fie  Kal  X^et-  hruTTpd<pov 
Kal  ide  tLs  el/jii.  arpatpels  abv  Kal  Ibihv  eJirov  K^pie,  oi/K  oJ8a  rls  et  \iyei  iKeiyos'  iyd)  eifii 
'Iriaovs,  6v  irpoex&^s  iKi^bevaas.  X^w  Trpbs  ainbv  Sei^bv  /xot  rbv  Td(pov,  Kal  r&re  rruTreiad). 
\a^Qv  odv  fie  rrjs  x«/)6s  dTn^yayev  iv  ry  rdtfxf  6vri  ■^ve<fyfiiv(fi.  Kal  I5(bp  iyu  tt)v 
<riv56va  Kal  rb  aovddptov  Kal  yvwpUras  elirov  eiXoyTjfjL^vos  b  ipxbpjevos  iv  dvb/xaTi  KvpLov, 
Kal  irpoa-eKOvijaa  avrbv.  elra  Xa^cbv  fjue  rrjs  x^'^P^^t  dKoKovdoivruv  Kal  tQv  dyy^tov, 
ijyayev  els  'Apifiadlap  iv  r^  otK(p  fwv,  Kal  X^7ei  fwi-  Kddov  ivravda  ?a>s  ijfUpas  retrcrapd- 
Kovra.  iyiji  ydp  virdyoj  els  robs  fjutdrjrds  /tou,  tva  ir\T)po(f>op'^<rb)  avrobs  Krip&rTeiv  rijv 
ifi^v  avdaraffiv  [A.  xv.  6  (p.  274)  :  Ibob  ydp  irope6ofMi  vpbs  robs  dde\<f)oiis  puov  els  t^v 
TaXiXofai'].  Cf.  A  xv.  6  (pp.  272  flf.)  ;  Gesta.  xv.  5  (pp.  381  f.)  ;  Narratio 
losephi,  iv.  2  (pp.  467  flf.). 

B.  xiv.  I  (p.  318) :  pLeff  ijpi^pas  dk  bXlyas  ^\dov  dvb  ttjs  raXtXofos  els  rd  'lepoffbXv/xa 
&v6pu)iroi  rpeTs-  b  els  i^  airrdv  ijv  lepevs  bvbfMTi.  ^ipeis,  b  ^repos  Xevlrrjs  bpbpxiTi  'A77otoj, 
*col  6  ?Te/Jos  ffTpaTiLbrrfs  [A.  xiv.  i  (p.  259)  SiddffKaXos]  bpbpuxTi  'A5as.  oiroi  ^Xdop 
irpbs  robs  dpxi-^P^i^  Kal  elirop  abrois  Kal  rip  Xoy-  rbp  'Irja-ovp,  8p  vfieTs  iaTavpdxraTej 
etSopLep  ip  ry  TaXiXalq.  puerd  tup  UpdeKa  pMdriTiOP  airroO  els  rb  6pos  tQp  iXaiwp  [A.  xiv.  I 


354 


THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES 


(p.  259)  rh  KoKoiifUPow  Ma/i/Xx-  V.  1.  Mo/i*/SiJxi  MaXV,  Mo0ij*f,  Mofjuprj,  Manbre 
sive  Malech,  Manbre  sive  Amalech,  Mambre,  Mabrech],  SiSdaKovra  wphs  aih 
Toi>s  Kal  \4yorra-  rropeiSriTe  els  wdvra  rbv  Kbcyjov  Kal  KrjpO^are  ri  ci>77Atov,  Kal  Arrts 
xurreioei  Kal  (iawriad^  <rw^i)<rerat,  Arrtj  5^  oi  mareOaei  KaTaKpid-fyrerai.  Kal  ravra 
\iyup  ip^fiatvev  els  rbv  oiipavbv.  koI  ideupovfiey  Kal  ij/jbeis  Kal  AWoi  toWoI  tG>v  tcp- 
TaKOfflbty  liriKeiya.  Cf.  A.  xiv.  I  (pp.  259  f.),  Gesta,  xiv.  I  (p.  372)  ;  B.  xvi. 
2  (p.  322),  A.  xvi.  S  (p.  279),  Gesta,  xvi.  3  (p.  386)  ;  Descensus  Christi,  B. 
i.  [xvii.]  (p.  417).  In  A.  xiii.  i  (p.  255)  the  message  of  the  angel  to  the 
women  at  the  sepulchre  concludes  :  Kal  Taxi>  vopevdeTa-ai  etvare  rots  futdrirats 
a&TOv  &rt  itn/^pOij  ivb  rdv  veKpwv^  koI  Hariv  iv  r^  Ta\i\alq...  Cf.  also  xiii.  2  (p. 
257),  B.  xiii.  I  (p.  317),  Gesta,  xiii.  i  (p.  369)  ;  Anaphora  Pilati,  A.  9  (p. 
441). 


THE  RESURRECTION  APPEARANCES 


355 


VII.    ABBREVIATIONS. 

AJTh.  The  American  Journal  of  Theology:  Chicago  University. 

BG.  Beweiss  des  Glaubens:  Zockler  und  Steude. 

BFTh.  Beitrage  zur  Forderung  christ.  Theologie ;  Schlatter  u.  Liitgert. 

ChQuRev.  Church   Quarterly   Review;   A.   C.   Headlam. 

ChrW.  Christliche  Welt:  Rade. 

DCG.  Dictionary  of  Christ  and  the  Gospels:  Hastings. 

EB.  Encyclopedia  Biblica:   Cheyne  and  Black. 

Exp.  Expositor:  R.  Nicoll. 

HB.  Handbuch  zum  Neuen  Testament:  Lietzmann. 

HC.  Hand-Commentar  zum  Neuen  Testament:  H.  J.  Holtzmann. 

HJ.  Hibbert  Journal :  L.  P.  Hicks. 

HThR.  The  Harvard  Theological  Review :  Harvard  University. 

ICC.  International  Crit.  Commentary :  Briggs,  Driver  and  Plunimer. 

JBL.  Journal  of  Biblical  Literature :  Society  of  Bibl.  Lit.  and  Exeg. 

JThSt.  Journal  of  Theological  Studies:   Bethune-Baker. 

KIT,  Kleine  Texte:  Lietzmann. 

MK.  Kritisch-exegetischer  Kommentar   iiber  das   Neue  Testament 

begriindet  von  H.  A.  W.  Meyer. 

NkZ.  Neue  kirchliche  Zeitschrift:  Engelhardt. 

OC.  The   Open  Court:   Open   Court   Publishing  Company. 

PrM.  Protestantische  Monatshef  te  :  Websky. 

PrThR.  The  Princeton  Theological  Review :  Princeton. 

RBd.  Revue  Benedictine:  Maredsous. 

RGG.  Religion  in  Geschichte  und  Gegenwart :  Schiele  u.  Zscharnack. 

RHLR.  Revue  d'Histoire  et  de  litterature  religieuses :  fimile  Nourry. 

SAB.  Sitzungsberichte  d.  konigl.  preuss.  Akad.  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin. 

SNT,  Die  Schriften  des  Neuen  Testaments :  J.  Weiss. 

StBE.  Studia  Biblica  et  Ecclesiastica :  Clarendon  Press. 

ThLBl.  Theologische  Literaturblatt :  Ihmels. 

ThLz.  Theologische  Literaturzeitung :  Schiirer  und  Harnack. 

ThQ.  Theologische  Quartalschrift :  Belser. 

ThR.  Theologische  Rundschau :  Bousset  und  Heitmiiller. 

ThStKr.  Theologische  Studien  und  Kritiken :  Kattenbusch  und  Loofs. 

ThT.  Theologisch  Tijdschrift:  B.  D.  Eerdmans. 

TU.  Texte  und  Untersuchungen :  Gebhardt  und  Harnack. 

ZK.  Kommentar  zum  Neuen  Testament :  Th.  Zahn. 

ZNW.  Zeitschrift  fiir  die  neutest.  Wissenschaft :  Preuschen. 

ZThK.  Zeitschrift  fiir  Theologie  und  Kirche:  Herrmann  und  Rade. 

ZwTh.  Zeitschrift  fiir  wissenschaftliche  Theologie:  A.  Hilgenfeld. 


MODERN  SPIRITUAL  MOVEMENTS 

Charles  Rosenbury  Erdman 


Introduction:    Spiritual  Life  and  Religious  Activities.    Phases  emphasized 
by  Modern  Movements. 
I.    Holiness. 

'^  Sinless     Perfection  "—"  Christian     Perfection  "—"  The     Oberlin 
Theory  " — "  The  Transferred  Self  " — "  Practical  Holiness  ". 
ir.    Peace. 

"  Quietism  "—"  Assurance  "—"  The     Rest     of     Faith  "—"  Perfect 
Peace  ". 

III.  Power  for  Service. 

"The  Gift  of  the  Spirit "—"  The  Infilling  of  the  Spirit "—"  The 
Baptism  of  the  Spirit  " — "  The  Pentecostal  Movement  ". 

IV.  Confidence  in  Prayer. 

"  The  Ministry  of  Intercession  " — George  Miiller — Hudson  Taylor 
— Faith  Healing — Seasons  of  Prayer. 
V.    Fellowship. 

"  Christian    Mysticism  " — "  The    Indwelling    Christ  " — "  Christian 
Fellowship  " — "  Conventions  " — "  Retreats  ". 

VI.  Knowledge. 

Bible     Study — Theological     Seminaries — Bible     Schools — Sabbath 
Schools. 

VII.  Hope. 

The  Study  of  Prophecy — Perversions  of  Doctrine — Inspiration  of 
Hope. 
Conclusion:     The  Possibilities  of  Personal  Progress. 


MODERN  SPIRITUAL  MOVEMENTS 

The  last  century  of  Christian  history  has  been  characterized 
by  notable  achievements  in  various  spheres  of  religious  thought 
and  endeavor.  It  has  been  an  era  of  great  activity  in  biblical 
and  theological  science,  of  marked  development  in  philan- 
thropic and  social  service,  of  unequalled  progress  in  evange- 
listic and  missionary  work.  All  these  activities  have  been 
manifestations  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  church.  In  its  es- 
sence this  life  has  been  the  same  in  all  ages,  however  varied 
may  have  been  its  providential  expressions  and  embodiments. 
The  absolute  necessity  of  maintaining  this  life  in  vigor  is 
quite  obvious.  Upon  it  depends  not  only  the  service,  and  the 
growth  of  the  church,  but  its  very  existence.  In  these  days  of 
vast  and  complicated  religious  enterprises  there  should  be 
proportionate  efforts  to  insure  the  growth  and  development  of 
this  essential  energy.  There  is  a  temptation  to  attempt  service 
without  strength,  to  project  great  movements  without  the 
supply  of  power,  to  expect  activities  without  life.  It  is  there- 
fore encouraging  to  find,  even  in  days  of  reputed  spiritual 
indifference,  large  groups  of  Christians  who  are  facing  the 
problems  of  Christian  experience,  and,  to  use  a  conventional 
phrase,  are  striving  for  "  the  deepening  of  the  spiritual  life  ". 
Obviously  "  the  means  of  grace  "  and  the  processes  of  spiritual 
growth  are  the  same  for  all  generations,  yet  it  is  helpful  and 
stimulating  to  note  the  phases  of  spiritual  life  which  have  been 
emphasized  by  certain  modern  movements.  Few  of  these 
movements  have  been  definitely  organized  or  clearly  defined, 
yet  they  have  expressed  the  aspirations  of  sincere  souls  for 
something  higher  in  Christian  attainment,  for  something  deep- 
er in  Christian  experience ;  and  their  influence  has  resulted  in 
the  elevation  and  maintenance  of  truer  ideals  of  Christian  liv- 
ing.   Many  of  them  have  been  attended  by  extravagances  and 


360  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

misconceptions,  but  these  have  been  like  waves  which,  as  they 
break  above  the  surface,  show  the  direction  and  power  of  cur- 
rents hidden  and  silent  and  strong.  These  movements  draw 
attention  to  elements  which  have  never  been  wanting  in  the  true 
life  of  the  church,  but  which  need  to  be  recognized  and  de- 
veloped continually  if  this  life  is  to  be  maintained  in  purity 
and  developed  in  power. 

I 

Holiness 

Among  the  essential  characteristics  of  the  followers  of 
Christ,  personal  holiness  has  ever  been  regarded  as  of  first 
importance.  Christians  are  "  called  to  be  saints  ".  Hence 
there  is  a  deep  interest  and  significance  in  the  **  holiness 
movements "  which,  under  various  names  and  in  differ- 
ing forms,  have  appeared  during  the  past  century.  Among 
their  leaders  are  many  types,  from  the  advocates  of  "  sinless 
perfection  "  on  the  one  extreme,  to  the  mild  advocates  of 
"  ethical  revival "  on  the  other ;  yet  all  have  emphasized  the 
Christian  duty  of  closer  conformity  to  the  will  and  character 
of  God. 

Occasionally  those  have  appeared  who  claimed  absolute  sin- 
lessness ;  they  confessed  no  further  need  of  penitence  and  for- 
giveness; they  claimed  to  have  perfectly  fulfilled  the  law  of 
God ;  but  they  exerted  slight  influence  and  aroused  little  inter- 
est, possibly  because  their  impeccability  was  a  phenomenon  dis- 
covered by  none  save  themselves,  while  to  unbiased  observers 
there  was  much  in  their  ideals  and  actions  which  apparently 
fell  below  a  divine  standard.  This  was  notably  the  case  with 
the  American  "  Perfectionists  ",  the  followers  of  Noyes,  who 
held  that  Christ  had  returned  to  earth  in  the  Apostolic  age, 
and  so  completed  his  saving  work  that  all  who  accepted  his 
rule  were  no  longer  under  law  but  under  grace  and  could  do  no 
wrong;  but  their  conduct  so  far  invalidated  their  claims  that 
unsympathetic  neighbors  broke  up  their  community  in  1847, 
after  an  experiment  of  little  more  than  ten  years.  "  Absolute 
perfection  "  does  not  seem  to  make  a  very  serious  appeal  to  the 
modem  imagination. 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  361 

More  commonly,  however,  the  claim  has  been  made  of  a 
relative  holiness,  or  of  "  Christian  Perfection  ".  This  doctrine 
is  of  course  associated  v^rith  the  name  of  John  Wesley,  who, 
in  the  previous  century,  had  advocated  the  theory,  but  had 
carefully  limited  his  statement  by  declaring  that  it  was  neither 
a  divine,  nor  an  angelic,  nor  an  Adamic  perfection ;  but  such  as 
is  possible  for  fallen  but  regenerated  man.  It  does  not  exclude 
ignorance  and  errors  of  judgment  with  consequent  wrong 
affections.  "  It  needs  the  atoning  blood  for  both  words  and 
actions  which  are,  in  a  sense,  transgressions  of  the  perfect 
law  ".  As  Wesley  declared  "  it  is  the  perfection  of  which  man 
is  capable  while  dwelling  in  a  corruptible  body;' — it  is  loving 
the  Lord  his  God  with  all  his  heart  and  with  all  his  soul,  and 
with  all  his  mind."  While  this  doctrine  has  been  subsequently 
misrepresented,  and  has  led  to  delusions  and  self-deceptions, 
while  even  in  its  original  form  it  is  open  to  serious  question  and 
criticism,  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  has  been  of  wide  and 
helpful  influence,  and  that  the  teachings  of  Methodism  have 
stimulated  the  desire  for  holier  living,  and  have  led  many  to 
higher  levels  of  Christian  experience. 

About  the  middle  of  the  century  there  appeared  a  curious 
phase  of  holiness  doctrine,  which  was  first  advocated  by  two 
theological  students  of  Oberlin.  According  to  the  theory  of 
''  the  simplicity  of  moral  action  "  it  is  impossible  that  sin 
and  virtue  should  coexist  in  the  human  heart  at  the  same  time. 
"All  moral  action  is  single  and  indivisible;  the  soul  is  either 
wholly  consecrated  to  Christ  or  it  has  none  of  his  spirit.  The 
two  states  may  alternate.  The  man  may  be  a  Christian  at  one 
moment,  and  a  sinner  the  next,  but  he  cannot  be  at  any  moment 
a  sinful  or  imperfect  Christian  ".  Dr.  Finney  seems  to  have 
accepted  the  logical  conclusions  of  the  theory  and  to  have 
taught  that  regeneration  involved  complete  sanctification. 

The  errors  in  such  a  system  it  may  not  be  difficult  to  dis- 
cover; yet  at  the  same  time  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  Dr. 
Finney  proved  to  be  a  great  power  in  promoting  personal 
holiness.  While  undoubtedly  carrying  his  doctrine  too  far 
and  suggesting  that  a  perfect  choice  of  God  is  essentially  a 
perfect  life,  he  did  emphasize  the  responsible  activity  of  the 
human  will.     While  Christians  were  apparently  waiting  for 


362  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

some  mysterious,  divine  impulse,  and  meanwhile  were  living 
carnal  lives  of  selfish  indulgence,  he  sounded  out  his  com- 
manding message  of  responsibility,  of  the  duty  of  moral  choice, 
of  the  absolute  necessity  of  immediate  and  continual  effort  to 
attain  the  holiness  which  is  possible  for  the  believer  and  is  de- 
manded of  the  follower  of  Christ. 

An  equally  curious  theory  of  holiness,  which  has  had  a 
wider  acceptance  than  is  usually  realized,  has  been  falsely  at- 
tributed to  the  Plymouth  Brethren.  It  was  a  perversion  of 
"  Plymouthism  "  and  should  never  be  regarded  as  forming  a 
part  of  that  system.  According  to  this  peculiar  theory,  re- 
generation consists  in  the  creation  of  a  "  new  nature  "  which 
is  sinless,  and  which  constitutes  the  "  real  self  ".  Meanwhile 
the  "  old  nature  "  still  exists,  but  is  no  longer  identified  with 
the  "  Ego  ".  Whatever  this  "  old  nature  "  may  do  involves 
the  believer  in  no  sin,  for  he  is  identified  with  the  new  nature 
which  does  no  sin.  Every  Christian  therefore  possesses  a  dual 
personality ;  he  is  a  veritable  "  Doctor  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  ", 
only,  no  matter  what  may  be  done  by  him,  he  is  accountable 
only  for  the  actions  of  the  genial  Doctor.  This  would  be  a 
comfortable  doctrine,  if  we  could  only  persuade  ourselves  of 
its  truth ;  but  most  of  us  are  compelled  to  believe  that  the  con- 
tinuous identity  of  personality  is  a  fundamental  fact  in  all 
human  consciousness  and  experience. 

What  the  Plymouth  Brethren  actually  taught  was  the  con- 
trast between  the  tendencies,  motives  and  inclinations  of  the 
regenerate  and  unregenerate  soul,  and  not  a  transferred  nor  a 
dual  personality.  They  continually  exhorted  believers  to 
"  identify  themselves  "  with  the  "  new  nature  ",  or  in  Pauline 
phrase,  **  to  reckon  themselves  dead  unto  sin  ",  ""'  knowing  that 
the  old  man  was  crucified  with  Christ  ".  It  was  this  scriptural 
doctrine,  or  their  possibly  imperfect  statement  of  this  doc- 
trine, which  was  perverted  into  the  theory  of  the  "  transferred 
self  ",  "  Plymouthism  ",  whatever  its  faults,  never  made  for 
antinomianism.  It  arose  as  a  protest  against  the  worldliness 
of  the  church  and  the  unscriptural  practices  of  professing 
Christians.  Its  adherents  advocated  absolute  submission  to  the 
scriptures,  and  proclaimed  with  clearness  and  fidelity  the  great 
truths  concerning  the  work  of  Christ,  the  justification  and 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  363 

Standing  of  believers,  and  the  absolute  need  of  continual  iden- 
tification with  Christ.  To  this  movement  more  than  to  any 
other  one  influence  the  church  is  indebted  for  the  teachings 
and  work  of  the  late  D.  L.  Moody.  He  was  never  identified 
with  the  *'  Brethren  ",  yet  he  was  fully  imbued  with  their 
doctrines  and  they  formed  the  substance  of  his  message. 
Such  an  example  may  suggest  the  general  relation  of  Plymouth 
teachings  to  evangelical  truth  in  general ;  but  it  is  in  the  specific 
matter  of  the  promotion  of  holiness  that  these  teachings  had 
their  most  helpful  influence,  an  influence  extending  widely  be- 
yond the  circles  of  the  Brethren.  According  to  these  tenets, 
the  justified  soul  is  free  from  the  guilt  both  of  "  sins  "  and  of 
"  sin  ",  from  condemnation  not  only  for  actual  transgressions 
but  also  for  the  possession  of  an  evil  nature,  and  so  of  a  ten- 
dency to  sin.  Of  course  if  one  allows  that  nature  to  express 
itself  in  acts,  those  acts  are  sins,  and  bring  with  them  guilt  and 
-separation  from  God.  But  the  mere  possession  of  these  evil 
tendencies  is  not  sin.  ''  There  is  no  condemnation  for  them 
that  are  in  Christ  Jesus."  The  apprehension  of  such  a  truth 
has  lifted  a  crushing  burden  from  many  a  soul  and  resulted  in 
immediate  and  unprecedented  progress  in  holiness.  The  re- 
sult has  been  like  the  difference  between  the  experiences  de-^ 
scribed  in  the  seventh  and  in  the  eighth  chapter  of  Romans. 
It  has  come  from  the  fuller  understanding  of  what  is  involved 
in  the  pregnant  statement :  "  What  the  law  could  not  do  in 
that  it  was  weak  through  the  flesh,  God  sending  his  own  Son 
in  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh,  and  for  sin,  condemned  sin  in 
the  flesh,  that  the  righteousness  of  the  law  might  be  fulfilled  in 
us  who  walk  not  after  the  flesh  but  after  the  Spirit."  It  is 
this  very  truth  of  "  the  standing  "  of  the  believer,  in  spite  of 
his  possession  of  evil  tendencies,  as  stated  by  the  Plymouth 
teachers,  which  was  perverted  into  the  doctrine  of  the  "  trans- 
ferred self  ".  Possibly  as  stated  by  these  teachers, — who  were 
not  usually  expert  in  metaphysical  distinctions,  and  who  often 
were  unconscious  of  the  psychological  implications  of  their 
own  statements  as  they  spoke  of  old  and  new  "  natures  ",  of 
identification  with  "  the  new  man  ",  and  identification  with 
Christ, — the  propositions  may  have  been  open  to  such  perver- 
sion ;  yet  none  can  sympathetically  review  the  Plymouth  teach- 


364  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

ings  without  gaining  a  fuller  apprehension  of  our  relation  to 
God  through  Christ.  In  spite  of  their  divisive  tendencies, 
their  occasional  misinterpretations  of  scripture  and  their  fond- 
ness for  controversy,  the  Plymouth  Brethren  have  been  exam- 
ples to  their  fellow  Christians  in  practical  separation  from  the 
world,  in  loyal  adherence  to  the  great  doctrines  of  grace,  and 
in  personal  holiness  of  life. 

Another  phase  of  holiness  teaching  with  even  less  apparent 
foundation  in  Scripture  than  could  be  found  for  the  theory  of 
the  "  transferred  self  "  was  advanced  by  the  advocates  of 
"  The  Higher  Life ".  While  this  movement  had  various 
forms,  and  was  indicated  by  different  phrases,  as  **  the  second 
blessing  ",  "  entire  sanctification  ",  or  "  complete  salvation  ", 
its  essential  teaching  was  that  absolute  sinlessness  might  be 
attained  by  a  single  act  of  complete  consecration  to  God.  It 
was  held  that  as  a  result  of  such  a  dedication  of  self  and  of  a 
simultaneous  act  of  appropriating  faith,  a  state  could  be  at- 
tained where  henceforth  the  believer  would  be  kept  from  sin. 
This  extreme  and  obviously  untenable  position  was  soon  modi- 
fied by  suggesting  that  the  experience  to  be  secured  was  not 
absolute  sinlessness,  but  a  perfection  of  Christian  love,  and  a 
relative  holiness,  which  was  later  defined  as  a  "  deliverance 
from  known  sin  ".  In  this  modified  form  the  movement  ex- 
erted wide  influence.  Among  its  leaders  will  be  remembered 
the  name  of  R.  Pearsall  Smith,  whose  rather  pathetic  story 
reminds  us  of  the  powerful  and  effective  appeals  made  by  these 
teachers  for  the  abandonment,  not  only  of  positive  sins,  but  of 
all  "  weights  ",  and  hindrances  to  Christian  progress,  and  for 
a  definite  and  complete  consecration  to  Christ.  It  is  to  the 
meetings  held  for  such  consecration,  and  to  the  suggestion  of 
the  possibility  of  attaining  a  truer  Christian  experience,  that 
we  are  to  trace  the  inception  of  the  movement  associated  with 
the  names  of  Oxford,  and  Brighton  and  Keswick. 

This  last  is  the  most  definite  and  powerful  and  familiar  of 
all  the  movements  for  holiness  which  the  century  has  wit- 
nessed. Like  the  advocates  of  "  The  Higher  Life  ",  its  early 
leaders  insisted  upon  an  experience  in  the  nature  of  a  "  crisis  ", 
and  aimed  to  secure  "  freedom  from  sin  ".  Yet  this  crisis  was 
such,  in  its  essence,  as  most  believers  needed  to  experience. 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  365 

and  the  deliverance  promised  was  from  *'  known  and  dis- 
covered sin ".  Some  of  these  teachers  insisted  that  the 
"  crisis  "  must  be  obtained  by  a  mechanical  process,  involving 
**  seven  steps  ",  which  were  to  be  taken  by  all,  and  in  an  in- 
variable order,  to  secure  "  the  fullness  of  blessing  ".  Kes- 
wick teachers  no  longer  hold  such  a  stereotyped  form  of  ex- 
perience to  be  essential  or  requisite.  In  fact  the  peculiarity  of 
the  Keswick  movement  is  that  its  true  helpfulness  has  been 
found,  not  in  changing  the  doctrinal  beliefs  of  its  adherents, 
but  in  aiding  them  to  appreciate  and  appropriate  the  riches  of 
grace  in  Christ  Jesus  which  are  offered  in  common  to  all  be- 
lievers. Its  supreme  aim  is  indicated  in  the  invitation  to  the 
original  Oxford  meetings  in  1874,  "  For  the  Promotion  of 
Scriptural  Holiness  ",  or  in  the  title  of  the  first  Keswick  gath- 
ering, in  1875,  a  "  Convention  for  the  Promotion  of  Practical 
Holiness."  The  purpose  therefore  has  been  to  make  men  holy. 
It  has  never  suggested  "  sinless  perfection  " ;  it  has  advocated 
no  new  doctrines  of  theology;  but  it  has  insisted  upon  the 
necessity  of  abandoning  all  known  sin,  of  complete  dedication 
to  Christ,  and  of  appropriating,  for  holy  living,  the  power  of 
God  in  Christ. 

Such  a  message  the  church  needs  to-day ;  such  a  movement, 
in  some  form,  it  should  welcome  and  promote.  Too  long  has 
the  mere  mention  of  *'  holiness  "  awakened  suspicion  and  a 
conscious  contempt  for  theories  of  "  sinless  perfection  "  on 
the  part  of  those  who  feel  content  with  practices  of  sinful  im- 
perfection. It  is  no  new  doctrine  to  declare  that  Christ  came 
to  save  us  from  the  power  as  well  as  the  guilt  of  sin;  but  it 
comes  like  a  divine  revelation  to  many,  who  are  in  bondage 
to  some  particular  form  of  evil,  to  be  assured  that  they  may 
enjoy  and  should  expect  continual  victory.  Every  Christian 
is  familiar  with  the  divine  command :  "  Be  ye  holy  for  I  am 
holy  " ;  yet  by  what  qualifications  and  excuses  do  we  allow 
ourselves  to  be  guilty  of  pride  and  indolence,  and  covetous- 
ness  and  censoriousness,  of  self-indulgence  and  spiritual  in- 
difference !  Conscious  of  secret  faults,  yet  facing  our  serious 
tasks,  we  need  to  be  reminded  anew  that  our  Lord  will  use 
only  clean  vessels.  Let  us  review  the  written  pledges  of  di- 
vine help  and  divine  fellowship,  and  "  having  these  promises, 


366  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

let  us  cleanse  ourselves  from  all  defilement  of  flesh  and  spirit 
perfecting  holiness  in  the  fear  of  God  ". 


II 

Peace. 

A  second  element  of  spiritual  life,  which  these  movements 
have  emphasized,  is  the  possibility  of  rest  and  peace  of  soul 
and  heart.  This  v^^as  the  promise  of  the  Master,  '*  Come  unto 
me  and  I  vyrill  give  you  rest  ".  This  was  his  legacy :  "  Peace, 
I  leave  with  you,  rhy  peace  I  give  unto  you."  This  was  the 
continual  salutation  of  the  apostles:  *'  Peace  be  multiplied  unto 
you  ".  Yet  in  how  few  lives  is  unbroken  peace  either  an 
habitual  experience  or  a  recognized  possibility.  In  its  place 
are  doubts  as  to  acceptance  with  God,  the  distraction  of  press- 
ing duties,  the  depression  of  conscious  and  continual  moral 
failure,  worry  in  the  present  and  anxiety  for  the  future.  Yet 
the  leaders  of  these  various  movements  speak,  with  an  unques- 
tioned sincerity,  of  their  experience  of  "  perfect  peace  and 
rest  ".  It  is  noticeable  that  the  Brethren,  the  advocates  of 
"  The  Higher  Life  '\  and  the  Keswick  teachers  have  this  in 
common,  that  they  have  laid  great  stress  upon  the  experience 
of  an  abiding  tranquility  of  soul.  It  is  described  by  different 
phrases,  as  "  assurance  ",  or  "  the  rest  of  faith  ",  or  the  **  full- 
ness of  blessing  " ;  but  it  seems  to  indicate  an  element  of  life 
noticeably  lacking  in  the  modern  church.  The  experience  was 
said  to  arise  from  different  sources,  and  was  explained  on 
different  grounds,  and  in  all  cases  was  evidently  distinct  from 
the  Quietism  of  earlier  centuries.  According  to  the  tenets  of 
the  many  sects  who  have  been  classed  under  this  general  term, 
the  perfect  state  of  the  soul  is  one  of  perfect  quiet  in  which  it 
ceases  to  reason  or  to  reflect  either  upon  itself  or  upon  God, 
or  to  exercise  any  of  its  faculties,  being  completely  under  the 
influence  of  God's  Spirit,  without  performing  the  ordinary 
acts  of  faith  or  hope  or  love.  Modern  spiritual  movements 
have  known  but  little,  if  anything,  of  such  speculative  errors ; 
and  yet  when  open  to  criticism  in  their  suggestions  as  to  the 
means  of  securing  peace,  it  has  been  along  a  closely  related  line 
of  indicating  a  too  passive  acceptance  of  supernatural  influen- 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL    MOVEMENTS  367 

ces.  Unlike  the  ''  Quietists  ",  modern  teachers  have  always 
insisted  upon  faith,  and  consciousness,  and  the  active  states  of 
the  soul.  If  peace  has  come  it  has  been  the  '*  peace  of  be- 
lieving ",  if  rest  has  been  enjoyed  it  has  been  the  "  rest  of 
faith  ". 

Among  the  Plymouth  Brethren  the  experience  has  been 
known  as  ''  the  assurance  of  salvation  ".  It  has  sprung  from 
confidence  in  a  divinely  wrought  work  of  regeneration,  in  the 
possession  of  a  new  nature,  and  in  the  promises  of  scripture. 
It  has  been  inseparable  from  belief  in  the  atoning  work  of 
Christ,  in  the  renewing  and  sanctifying  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  in  the  changeless  love  of  God.  Even  though  there  were, 
in  the  minds  of  many,  certain  mistaken  conceptions  as  to  the 
"  new  nature  ",  this  experience  was  evidently  based  on  the  ac- 
ceptance of  truths  which  have  been  the  common  possession  of 
the  church  of  all  ages.  There  was  nothing  novel  in  this  aspect 
of  their  teaching;  they  were  enjoying  a  peaceful  assurance,- 
perfectly  possible  for  all,  but  utterly  unknown  by  vast  multi- 
tudes of  the  professed  followers  of  Christ.  Nothing  would 
be  more  helpful  in  preparing  the  modern  church  for  service 
than  the  possession  of  this  confident  "  assurance  of  faith  ". 

In  the  case  of  the  advocates  of  ''  The  Higher  Life  "  the  ex- 
perience was  not  so  much  a  peace  born  of  a  conscious  accep- 
tance with  God  as  a  joyful  but  passive  reception  of  deliver- 
ance from  sin.  If  we  associate  the  name  of  R.  Pearsall  Smith 
with  a  call  to  holiness,  we  cannot  fail  to  remember  Hannah 
Whitall  Smith  as  an  advocate  of  "  the  rest  of  faith  ".  When 
reading  ''  the  Christian's  secret  of  a  happy  life  "  one  can- 
not but  feel  that  too  little  stress  is  laid  upon  the  need  of  human 
effort,  of  resolution,  determination,  conflict;  yet  none  the  less 
there  is  awakened  a  hunger  of  heart  for  the  peace  and  rest  and 
joyous  confidence  which  the  writer  shows  to  be  the  rightful  ex- 
perience of  every  Christian,  but  which  the  average  reader  re- 
gards with  the  yearning  of  one  who  is  tossing  upon  a  troubled 
sea,  but  dimly  discerning  the  distant  quiet  haven  he  seems  un- 
able to  reach.  The  Christian  life  is  of  course  a  struggle,  a 
contest,  a  buffeting  of  the  body,  a  warfare ;  and  any  theory  is 
to  be  deprecated  which  makes  us  less  mindful  of  the  necessity 
which  is  ever  upon  us  to  "  watch  and  pray  lest  we  fall  into 


368  MODERN   SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

temptation  ".  It  is  just  possible  that  the  very  phrase  "  the 
rest  of  faith  "  has  at  times  concealed  this  aspect  of  truth.  It 
has  come  to  us  from  the  fourth  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  and  has  usually  been  employed,  not  only  by  advo- 
cates of  the  "  Higher  Life  ",  but  by  many  other  teachers,  in  a 
sense  rather  at  variance  with  the  usage  of  the  author  of  the 
Epistle.  It  appears  that  he  is  speaking,  not  of  a  present  rest, 
but  of  a  future  experience,  which  he  finally  describes  as  "  a 
Sabbath  rest  "  which  yet  "  remains  for  the  people  of  God  ". 
For  the  present  there  is  continual  conflict,  yet  there  may  be 
continuous  victory.  •  "  The  rest  of  faith  "  should  never  denote 
a  state  of  inactivity.  As  a  scriptural  phrase  it  denotes  the  fu- 
ture experience  of  those  who  are  united  to  Christ  by  faith ;  and 
if,  by  accommodation,  it  is  applied  to  a  present  experience,  it 
should  be  employed  to  describe  the  peace  of  those,  who,  in  the 
midst  of  conflict,  have  the  consciousness  of  a  Saviour's  pres- 
ence and  confidence  in  his  unfailing  power. 

Such  is  "  the  rest  of  faith  ",  as  suggested  by  the  teachers  of 
the  Keswick  platform.  They  have  never  held  the  theory  that 
sin  is  dead,  or  that  it  has  been  eradicated.  They  have  ever 
warned  their  hearers  against  the  seductions  of  the  "  self-life  ", 
and  of  the  power  of  "  the  world  and  the  flesh  and  the  Devil  " ; 
but  they  have  sounded  out  the  triumphant  note ;  "  Thanks  be 
to  God  who  giveth  us  the  victory,  through  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ ". 

There  can  be  peace  amidst  conflict,  yet  this  thought  does  not 
exhaust  the  meaning  which  Keswick  teachers  have  intended  to 
embody  in  the  phrase  "  the  rest  of  faith  ".  There  can  be  not 
only  peace  in  the  midst  of  conflict,  but  restful  service  for 
those  at  toil,  and  quietness  of  heart  for  those  beset  by  the 
perplexities  and  disappointments  and  uncertainties  of  life. 
This  again  is  no  new  doctrine.  Such  perfect  peace  has  been  en- 
joyed by  unnumbered  followers  of  Christ  during  all  the  pass- 
ing centuries,  and  is  known  to-day  by  many  who  never  may 
have  heard  of  "  The  Higher  Life  ",  of  Keswick,  or  "  the  rest 
of  faith  ".  Yet  the  church  can  be  glad  that  the  message  has 
been  so  clearly  emphasized  in  these  latter  days  in  which  it  is 
peculiarly  needed.  "  Christian  Science "  and  "  The  New 
Thought  ",  and  similar  movements  which  have  promised  peace 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  369 

of  mind  and  freedom  from  worry,  might  not  have  attained 
their  popularity  and  power,  had  Christians  claimed  and  enjoyed 
and  manifested  the  rest  of  soul  which  Christ  is  ever  ready  to 
give;  or  had  they,  in  faith,  obeyed  the  exhortation  of  Paul: 
"  Rejoice  in  the  Lord  always.  In  nothing  be  anxious ;  but  in 
everything  by  prayer  and  supplication  with  thanksgiving  let 
your  requests  be  made  known  unto  God ;  and  the  peace  of  God 
which  passeth  all  understanding  shall  guard  your  hearts  and 
your  thoughts  in  Christ  Jesus  ".  That  such  peace  and  rest 
are  possible  to-day  is  the  message  of  that  beautiful  hymn  by 
Miss  Havergal,  which,  because  of  its  frequent  use,  is  insepar- 
ably connected  with  Keswick  Conventions: 

"Like  a  river  glorious 
Is  God's  perfect  peace. 
Over  all  victorious 
In  its  bright  increase; 
Perfect,  yet  it  floweth 
Fuller  every  day — 
Perfect,  yet  it  groweth 
Deeper  all  the  way." 

''  Stayed  upon  Jehovah 
Hearts  are  fully  blest ; 
Finding,   as  he  promised. 
Perfect  peace  and  rest." 

Ill 

Power  for  Service. 

The  true  end  of  life  is  service.  It  is  first  of  all  "  to  glorify 
God  "  if  it  is  secondly  "  to  enjoy  him  ".  This  obvious  fact 
has  been  overlooked  by  many  advocates  of  the  higher  phases 
of  Christian  life.  They  have  been  tempted  to  reverse  the 
order,  if  not  to  make  the  subjective  experience  an  end  in  it- 
self. Yet  even  these  teachers  have  not  failed  to  call  attention 
to  the  indispensible  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  All  modern 
movements  for  the  deepening  of  the  spiritual  life  devote  the 
greater  portion  of  their  literature  to  the  discussion  of  the 
operations  of  the  Spirit  upon  the  soul  and  in  the  life  of  the 


370 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 


believer.  In  most  cases,  however,  the  purpose  has  been  to  so 
relate  the  life  to  the  divine  will,  and  to  be  so  endued  with  divine 
grace,  as  to  secure  what  is  commonly  designated  as  "  power 
for  service  ".  The  phrase  itself  is  objectionable  as  open  to  a 
misinterpretation.  It  may  seem  to  suggest  that  spiritual  power 
is  a  distinct  entity,  imparted  to  the  believer  to  be  used  in 
Christian  service;  whereas  in  reality  the  believer  is  only  the 
channel  or  instrument  which  the  Spirit  employs.  This  would 
be  freely  admitted  by  most  exponents  of  the  doctrines  which 
relate  to  spiritual  experience.  Many  may  have  been  guilty  of 
strange  extravagances,  and  of  curious  misinterpretations  of 
Scripture,  yet  all  have  emphasized  anew  the  divine  message, 
so  much  needed  in  these  days  of  multiplied  organizations,  and 
complicated  religious  machinery,  and  human  programmes: 
"  Not  by  might  nor  by  power  but  by  my  Spirit,  saith  the  Lord." 
The  scriptural  doctrine  concerning  the  Holy  Spirit  does  not 
seem  to  be  specially  intricate  or  difficult  to  understand,  how- 
ever varied  may  be  its  form  of  statement  by  different  exposi- 
tors. The  Christian  Church  through  all  the  centuries  has  be- 
lieved that  God,  by  his  Spirit,  is  present  with  every  follower 
of  Christ ;  that  He  grants  needed  grace  for  every  experience  in 
life;  that  the  essential  condition  of  his  fuller  manifestation  is 
more  complete  devotion  to  Christ. 

There  is  nothing  mystical  about  the  doctrine.  It  suggests 
no  need  of  sudden  crises  or  mechanical  and  esoteric  processes. 
Yet  a  great  number  of  modern  movements,  seriously  intended 
to  secure  greater  efficiency  in  Christian  service,  have  been  led 
by  those  who  have  intimated  that  either  the  presence  or  the 
power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  is  in  some  way  extraordinary,  and 
that  his  gracious  operations  can  be  made  possible  only  by  some 
special  method  or  peculiar  plan  of  action  which  will  result  in  an 
experience  distinct,  separate  from  and  subsequent  to  conversion. 

For  instance  there  are  those  who  teach  that  "  The  Gift  of 
the  Spirit ",  which  was  promised  at  Pentecost  to  all  who  re- 
pented and  believed,  is  now  granted  only  to  certain  Christians, 
and  as  a  gift  separate  from  regeneration.  They  urge  others 
to  pray  for  his  coming,  to  seek  for  "  the  blessing  ",  to  "  re- 
ceive the  Holy  Ghost  ".  The  scriptures,  however,  plainly  teach 
that  to  speak  of  a  Christian  in  whom  the  Holy  Spirit  is  not 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL    MOVEMENTS  371 

dwelling,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  ''If  any  man  have  not 
the  Spirit  of  Christ  he  is  none  of  his  " — he  is  not  a  Christian. 
''  No  man  can  say,  Jesus  is  Lord,  but  in  the  Holy  Spirit." 
One  may  have  grieved  Him  by  his  life,  or  failed  to  yield  to 
his  gracious  bidding;  but,  in  the  Bible,  Christians  are  never 
urged  to  become  holy  in  order  that  the  Holy  Spirit  may 
come  to  them;  even  the  most  impure  were  urged  to  cleanse 
themselves  because  their  bodies  were  already  ''  temples  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  ".  It  is  at  once  the  encouraging  and  inspiring 
doctrine  of  scripture  that  the  Comforter  has  come  to  abide 
with  every  Christian  forever.  The  prevalent  misconception 
has  been  due  to  the  careless  interpretation  of  certain  passages. 

(a)  It  is  asserted  that  the  Spirit  came  to  the  disciples  at 
Pentecost,  although  their  acceptance  of  Christ  and  their  re- 
generation were  experienced  long  before.  It  may  be  an- 
swered that  while  at  Pentecost  there  was  a  new  manifestation 
of  the  Spirit's  power,  he  did  not  then  for  the  first  time,  come 
to  the  followers  of  Christ,  but  had  long  been  with  them,  as 
he  was  with  Jesus,  and  with  John  and  Mary  and  the  saints  of 
old.  Nor  was  the  gift  granted  only  to  the  eleven,  but  to  all 
the  "  one  hundred  and  twenty  "  and  to  three  thousand  converts 
on  the  day  of  their  accepting  Christ. 

(b)  The  delay  in  the  impartation  of  the  Spirit  to  the  Samar- 
itan believers,  is  adduced  as  an  argument ;  but  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  the  bestowment  of  special  supernatural  gifts  at 
the  hands  of  the  apostles  is  a  matter  quite  distinct  from  the  pre- 
vious regenerating  and  sanctifying  operations  of  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

(c)  Paul  is  said  to  have  asked  the  followers  of  John  the 
Baptist  at  Ephesus  whether  they  received  the  Holy  Ghost, 
"  when  they  believed  ",  thereby  implying  that  such  a  reception 
is  normally  subsequent  to  the  acceptance  of  Christ.  The  suf- 
ficient answer  is  that  they  were  followers  of  John  the  Baptist, 
and  that,  when  Paul  preached  to  them  Christ,  they  accepted 
Christ,  and  immediately  the  Holy  Spirit  came  upon  them 
with  supernatural  power. 

The  typical  case  for  all  believers  is  that  of  Cornelius  and 
his  household.  Even  in  the  midst  of  the  sermon,  before  any 
open  confession,  or  baptism,  or  laying  on  of  hands,  the  full 


372 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 


Pentecostal  blessing  was  received.  It  is  not  necessary,  there- 
fore, that  a  Christian  should  agonize  in  prayer,  or  by  any 
peculiar  experience  or  in  any  particular  place  seek  for  "the 
gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit ";  but  rather  he  should  be  encouraged 
so  to  live  as  to  in  no  way  grieve  the  divine  inhabitant  who  has 
come  to  abide  in  every  believing  heart,  and  so  to  seek  the 
glory  of  his  Lord  that  he  may  use  him  continually  for  the 
doing  of  his  will. 

The  case  of  Cornelius  may  also  serve  as  a  helpful  corrective 
to  many  others,  who,  while  believing  in  the  presence  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  with  all  believers,  insist  that  "  the  infilling  of  the 
Holy  Spirit "  is  a  unique  experience,  subsequent  to  regenera- 
tion, and  only  to  be  attained  by  some  specified  and  uniform 
process.  Certain  teachers  brought  an  unnecessary  and  un- 
fortunate discredit  to  the  Keswick  movement  by  the  advocacy 
of  this  theory.  Six  ''  steps  "  were  insisted  upon  as  prepara- 
tory to  the  desired  experience:  (i)  Abandonment  of  every 
known  sin;  (2)  Surrender  of  the  will  and  the  whole  being 
to  Jesus  Christ;  (3)  Appropriation  by  faith  of  God's  promise 
and  power  for  holy  living;  (4)  Voluntary  renunciation  and 
mortification  of  the  self-life;  (5)  Gracious  renewal  or  trans- 
formation of  the  inmost  temper  and  disposition;  (6)  Separa- 
tion unto  God  for  sanctification,  consecration  and  service. 
Then  would  follow  the  desired  blessing,  namely  (7)  Endue- 
ment  with  power  and  "  infilling  with  the  Holy  Spirit ". 

Now  it  should  be  remarked  that  these  seven  acts  or  states, 
at  some  time  or  in  enlarging  measure,  should  be  those  of 
every  Christian;  but  the  first  three  should  be  regarded  as  in- 
separable from  conversion;  the  second  three  should  be  con- 
tinuous processes;  and  the  last,  the  goal  of  all,  should  be  re- 
garded as  an  experience  often  to  be  repeated.  As  to  the  first 
three,  they  are  involved  in  a  true  acceptance  of  Christ;  and 
one  who  has  taken  those  steps  has  been  born  of  the  Spirit  who 
has  come  to  abide  with  him  forever.  The  fourth  is  equivalent 
to  "  taking  up  the  cross  "  and  must  be  done  "  daily  ".  The 
fifth  and  sixth  are  descriptive  of  the  progressive  sanctifying 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  seventh  is  the  normal  state  of 
all  Christians ;  to  be  "  filled  with  the  Spirit  "  is  as  natural  as 
"  not  to  be  filled  with  wine  ".    Those  who  daily  devote  them- 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  373 

selves  to  Christ  should  expect  to  be  led  and  empowered  and  con- 
trolled by  his  Spirit.  Yet  this  ideal  state  is  not  the  usual  state 
of  professed  followers  of  Christ.  There  may  be  an  interval  be- 
tween conversion  and  the  fuller  manifestation  of  the  Spirit's 
power ;  there  need  be  none ;  but  there  may  have  been  some  lack 
of  knowledge  or  imperfect  obedience,  or  unconscious  disloyalty 
to  the  Master,  and  then  gradually,  or  possibly  by  a  sudden 
crisis,  a  more  complete  knowledge  and  appropriation  of  Christ 
results  in  a  new  experience  of  peace  or  holiness  or  power.  In 
such  a  case,  however,  this  "  second  blessing  "  is  only,  what  has 
been  well  called,  "  the  missing  half  of  the  first  blessing." 

This  experience  of  being  "  filled  with  the  Spirit "  may  be 
repeated;  the  early  disciples  were  filled  again  and  again;  sin 
may  have  grieved  the  Spirit ;  or  there  may  be  need  of  some  new 
manifestation  of  his  power;  then  repentance  and  renewed  con- 
secration result  in  new  blessing.  The  ''  second  blessing  "  may 
be  less  notable  than  the  twenty-second.  By  insisting  on  a  pro- 
cess of  six  steps  resulting  in  a  "  crisis  "  called  ''  the  infilling 
of  the  Spirit ",  the  false  implication  is  given  that  to  have  been 
"  filled  with  the  Spirit ",  is  to  have  attained  a  level  which' 
never  can  be  lost,  to  have  been  granted  a  gift  which  never  need 
be  renewed,  whereas  we  need  daily  fillings,  and  continual 
bestowments,  and  "  grace  for  grace  ". 

This  "  filling  of  the  Spirit  "  may  not  be  attended  by  the 
manifestations  which  have  been  expected.  Many  Christians 
torment  themselves  by  the  fear  that  they  are  not  "  Spirit- 
filled  "  because  they  are  judging  themselves  by  some  fictitious 
or  arbitrary  standard.  They  are  looking  for  some  power  of  ut- 
terance, some  specific  result  in  service,  some  particular  emotion 
which  the  Lord  may  deny.  It  is  not  for  us  to  dictate  the 
mode  of  his  operation  but  to  yield  to  his  sovereign  will. 

The  *'  fulness  of  the  Spirit  "  may  be  an  unconscious  exper- 
ience. One  most  truly  under  his  power  will  not  at  the  time 
be  much  concerned  about  himself,  but  will  be  conscious  anew 
of  the  love  of  God,  or  the  glory  of  Christ.  There  is  no  sug- 
gestion in  scripture  that  the  Spirit  glorifies  himself  or  mani- 
fests himself ;  he  "  sheds  abroad  in  our  hearts  the  love  of  God  ", 
he  has  come  to  "  glorify  Christ ".  The  Christian  should  not 
be  pausing  to  continually  test  his  spiritual  condition  by  self- 


374 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 


imposed  standards,  but  should  ever  be  asking  whether  he  is 
wholly  devoted  to  his  Lord.  Such  devotion  will  be  insepar- 
able from  all  that  is  meant  by  being  "  filled  with  the  Spirit  ". 

In  most  cases  the  experience  will  be  gradual.  It  is  true  that 
in  the  early  chapters  of  the  Acts  there  were  recorded  sudden 
and  unusual  manifestations  of  the  Spirit's  power;  but,  through 
the  entire  course  of  the  Epistles,  only  one  such  reference  is 
made.  Wherever,  in  the  Bible,  such  experiences  are  men- 
tioned, nothing  is  said  of  uniform  "  steps  "  or  "  processes  ". 
Repentance  and  faith  and  identification  with  Christ  are  men- 
tioned, and  each  One  of  these  may  involve  a  crisis ;  and  then 
the  faithful  following  of  Christ  may  involve  a  series  of  crises. 
But  normally  the  usual  "  means  of  grace  "  may  be  expected 
to  result  in  a  gradual  increase  of  power,  enabling  us  to  serve  or 
to  suffer,  or  to  grow  into  the  likeness  of  our  Lord. 

Closely  connected  with  these  theories  as  to  "  the  infilling  of 
the  Spirit ",  is  the  doctrine  concerning,  "  The  Baptism  of  the 
Spirit ".  This  is  defined  as  "  a  conscious  experience,  distinct 
from  and  additional  to  regeneration,  designed  to  give  power 
for  testimony  or  service."  It  is  also  designated  as  "  the  endue- 
ment  for  power  ",  or  "  the  baptism  for  service  ".  It  is  obvious- 
ly, therefore,  the  claim  of  a  similar  experience  more  clearly 
defined  in  character  than  "  the  infilling  ",  or  is  a  specific  appli- 
cation of  the  previous  theories.  It  is  supposed  to  be  proved  by 
the  same  passages  of  scripture,  and  demands  a  similar  series 
of  prescribed  "steps".  The  latter  are  as  follows:  (i)  Ac- 
ceptance of  Jesus  Christ  as  Saviour  and  Lord;  (2)  Renun- 
ciation of  sin;  (3)  An  open  confession  of  this  renunciation 
of  sin  and  acceptance  of  Jesus  Christ;  (4)  Absolute  surrender 
to  God;  (5)  An  intense  desire  for  the  baptism  with  the  Spirit; 
(6)  Definite  prayer  for  this  baptism;  (7)  Faith  that  the  bap- 
tism has  been  given. 

It  is  even  more  clear  in  the  case  of  these  steps,  than  in 
those  once  insisted  upon  at  Keswick,  that  the  four  which  are 
preliminary  and  preparatory  to  "  the  experience  "  are  abso- 
lutely identical  with  those  in  conversion;  if  one  has  not  "ac- 
cepted Christ  ",  "  renounced  sin  ",  "  confessed  Christ  ",  and 
"  surrendered  to  God  ",  he  is  not  a  Christian ;  if  he  has  taken 
these  steps  he  is  a  Christian,  and  as  such  has  been  baptized  by 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  375 

the  Spirit  into  the  one  body  of  Christ.  Special  work  may  be 
given  to  do,  native  talents  may  be  developed,  special  gifts 
may  be  received,  but  this  will  be  as  occasions  may  arise  and  by 
the  normal  guidance  and  influence  of  the  Spirit  which  animates 
this  ''  one  body  ". 

The  phrase  "  baptism  with  the  spirit  "  is  never  applied  in 
the  New  Testament  to  an  experience  subsequent  to  conversion, 
except  in  the  case  of  the  unique  Pentecostal  manifestation; 
and  if  it  is  there  applied  to  the  little  group  of  believers  it  is 
also  applied  to  the  three  thousand  souls  who  were  not  previous- 
ly converted  but  on  that  day  were  united  to  the  Christian 
church.  The  impossibility  of  limiting  the  use  of  the  term  as 
suggested  by  this  theory  appears  at  once  on  reading  the  ac- 
count of  the  conversion  of  Cornelius  and  his  household.  Here 
the  experience  is  described  by  such  phrases  as  "  poured  out ", 
'*  fell  upon  ",  "  received  ",  "  baptized  ",  "  gave  "  ;  and  it  was 
said  by  Peter  to  be  identical  with  the  experience  at  Pentecost 
which  was  also  described  as  either  a  "  baptism  "  or  a  "  filling  " 
or  a  "  gift  ".  The  scriptural  usage  is  to  apply  the  word  "  bap- 
tism "  to  the  initial  operation  of  the  Spirit  by  which  a  believer 
is  regenerated  and  incorporated  with  the  body  of  Christ,  while 
successive  "  fillings  "  describe  subsequent  special  manifestations 
of  the  Spirit's  power,  "  One  baptism  but  many  fillings  "  seems 
to  be  the  teaching  and  the  terminology  of  scripture. 

But  we  are  not  so  much  intent  upon  the  name  as  upon  the 
nature  of  the  alleged  "  enduement  for  service".  There  seems 
to  be  no  reason  for  believing  that  the  New  Testament  de- 
scribes an  operation  of  the  Spirit  distinct  from  regeneration, 
from  the  miraculous  gifts  of  the  early  church  and  from  the 
continual  supply  of  grace  for  the  various  necessities  of  the 
Christian  life;  nor  does  it  in  any  place  suggest  that  power  for 
service  can  be  obtained  by  any  prescribed  spiritual  process,  or 
tour  de  force  of  faith.  The  conditions  of  spiritual  power  are 
the  same  for  all  the  experiences  of  the  believer.  Nor  again 
does  Christian  testimony  confirm  such  a  theory  of  a  special 
baptism  given  once  and  for  all.  Dr.  Finney  declared  that  he 
received  "  an  overwhelming  baptism  of  the  Holy  Spirit  "  on 
the  day  of  his  conversion,  but  that  he  needed  to  have  this 
same  experience  repeated  again  and  again.     The  Spirit  is  an 


376  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

abiding  presence;  of  course  he  grants  power  for  service, 
but  so  too  does  he  impart  patience  in  suffering,  and  growth 
in  grace.  It  is  laudable  to  desire  an  enduement  of  power ;  but 
we  should  no  more  expect  this  to  be  secured  by  a  mystical  crisis, 
than  we  should  claim  an  instantaneous  transformation  into  the 
likeness  of  Christ  by  a  sudden  exercise  of  will.  Why  not  as 
properly  expect  a  sudden  "  baptism  for  purity  ",  or  "  baptism 
for  love  *',  as  a  "  baptism  for  power  *'  ?  And  why  are  we  to 
suppose  the  supply  of  "  power  "  is  given  once  for  all,  and  not  as 
frequently  repeated  as  occasions  may  demand?  Or,  admitting 
such  bestowals  to  be.  repeated,  why  distinguish  the  first  from 
all  the  rest,  and  designate  it  by  the  special  name  of  "  the  bap- 
tism "  ?  It  is  the  duty  of  the  Christian  to  devote  himself  to 
the  service  of  his  Master,  believing  that  by  his  Spirit,  he  will 
equip  him  with  all  needed  power  for  the  accomplishment  of 
his  perfect  will.  Crises  will  come  and  special  difficulties  will 
arise,  and  particular  manifestations  will  be  given;  but,  for  all 
the  experiences  of  life,  the  abiding  Comforter  will  supply 
every  need. 

The  essential  fallacy  in  the  theory  of  "  the  baptism  with  the 
Spirit ",  is  the  arbitrary  selection  of  one  manifestation  of  his 
indwelling,  namely,  "  power  for  service",*  and  of  regarding  it 
as  differently  conditioned  from  his  other  operations,  or  as  a 
proof  that  the  believer  is  truly  under  his  control.  This  fallacy 
is  emphasized  by  the  extraordinary  developments  of  the  recent 
"  Pentecostal  movement  "  which  has  caused  so  much  of  excite- 
ment and  unrest  among  many  faithful  Christian  workers  in 
America,  and  England,  and  India,  and  China.  It  is  taught 
that  one  who  is  truly  "  filled  with  the  Spirit "  will  be  granted 
the  miraculous  *'  gift  of  tongues  ".  This  gift  is  coveted  not  as 
an  instrument  for  service,  so  much  as  a  demonstration  of  "  the 
fullness  of  the  Spirit ".  Whether  the  whole  movement  is  an 
outburst  of  fanaticism,  and  whether  the  supposed  gift  is  in 
every  case  a  pitiful  delusion,  are  questions  of  fact  to  be  deter- 
mined upon  the  investigation  of  evidence;  but  it  is  beyond  all 
question  that  the  movement  is  inspired  by  a  false  conception 
and  involves  a  mistaken  theory.  No  one  manifestation  can  be 
selected  as  proof  of  the  indwelling  and  the  operation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  least  of  all  some  extraordinary  gift  which  tends 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  377 

to  draw  attention  to  the  possessor  rather  than  to  Christ  the 
giver. 

Such  a  movement  is  manifestly  strongly  contrasted,  in  its 
unscriptural  doctrines,  vi^ith  the  teachings  of  those  sane  and 
devoted  Christians  who  have  held  their  special  theories  as  to 
the  "  filling  "  or  "  baptism  "  of  the  Spirit.  The  influence  of 
the  latter  has  been  salutary ;  it  has  suggested  the  unquestioned 
truth  that  the  lives  of  many  Christians  are  so  worldly  and  sel- 
fish that  a  ''  crisis  "  is  truly  needed, — a  new  consecration  to 
Christ, — to  be  followed  by  a  "  process  "  of  increasing  trans- 
formation into  his  likeness  and  of  larger  achievement  in  his 
service.  Much  of  the  apparent  divergence  of  views,  among 
those  who  have  been  discussing  the  biblical  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  is  due  to  a  difference  in  phraseology.  All  are  united  in 
declaring  that  he  is  the  source  of  all  life  and  grace  and  power ; 

'*  And  every  virtue  we  possess 
And  every  victory  won 
And  every  thought  of  holiness 
Are  his  alone." 

IV 

Confidence  in  Prayer. 

Prayer  is  the  vital  breath  of  the  Christian  church,  it  is  at 
once  the  source  and  expression  of  its  spiritual  life;  it,  alone, 
makes  possible  the  inception  and  renders  permanent  its  various 
forms  of  service.  The  ''  secrets  "  of  prayer  have  been  "  open  " 
during  the  whole  history  of  the  race;  no  recent  discoveries 
have  been  made  as  to  its  nature  or  conditions  or  power;  yet 
God  has  granted,  during  the  past  century  certain  definite  mes- 
sages which  have  inspired  the  church  to  a  new  confidence  in 
prayer.  There  has  been  a  new  appreciation  of  the  blessed 
"  ministry  of  intercession  ".  Many  "  hidden  servants  of  the 
King  "  have  learned  how  to  wield  in  secret  an  omnipotent 
power  which  has  achieved  marvellous  results  in  distant  lands ; 
while  certain  forms  of  public  service  have  been  so  identified 
with  prayer  as  to  stimulate  others  to  depend  more  definitely 
upon  the  willingness  of  God  to  honor  the  believing  petitions  of 
his  people.     Of  the  latter  two  examples  may  be  cited  as  illus- 


378  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

trations  of  the  many  forms  of  testimony  embodied  in  the 
Christian  history  of  the  past  century.  George  Miiller,  the 
founder  of  the  great  orphanages  at  Bristol,  England,  felt  spe- 
cially called  to  a  service  which  would  prove  that  prayer  is  a 
reality,  and  that  definite  petitions  receive  specific  answers  from 
God.  He  undertook  his  great  charity  on  a  faith-basis,  de- 
termining to  solicit  no  funds,  and  to  mention  no  needs  save  to 
God  alone;  and  to  do  this,  not  to  suggest  a  method  which  all 
Christian  workers  should  adopt,  but  to  demonstrate  a  power 
which  all  believers  might  wield.  He  conducted  his  work,  not 
only  to  save  orpKansfrom  distress  and  to  bring  them  to  Christ, 
but  primarily  to  prove  the  efficacy  of  prayer.  During  all 
the  decades  of  his  prolonged  life  he  made  no  appeal  for  aid ;  in 
times  of  special  scarcity  he  even  delayed  the  publication  of  his 
annual  report,  lest  it  might  suggest  to  his  friends  the  need  of 
relief.  He  went  directly  to  God.  The  record  of  that  life,  so 
thrilling  in  interest,  presents  facts  as  to  answered  prayer  which 
can  be  explained  away  by  no  theory  of  coincidences,  and  by 
no  reasoning  of  naturalism.  More  than  seven  and  a  half  mil- 
lions of  dollars  came  to  this  one  Christian  worker  in  answer 
to  believing  prayer. 

A  second  familiar  figure,  which  had  a  definite  and  inspiring 
message  to  this  century  of  Christians,  was  that  of  Hudson 
Taylor.  He  never  insisted  that  all  Christian  enterprises,  nor 
even  that  all  Christian  missions,  should  be  conducted  upon  ex- 
actly the  principles  he  followed  in  his  work.  He  held  that 
other  forms  of  organization  might  be  quite  as  compatible  with 
a  life  of  faith;  yet  he  felt  called  to  a  peculiar  work  and  for 
its  accomplishment  his  sole  reliance  was  upon  the  power  of 
prayer.  At  the  time  the  eleven  great  interior  provinces  of 
China  were  wholly  unevangelized.  That  was  a  memorable  day, 
when,  at  Brighton,  Hudson  Taylor  wrote  on  the  margin 
of  his  Bible :  "  Prayed  for  twenty-four  willing,  skillful  work- 
ers, June  25,  1865."  It  was  the  actual  record  of  the  founding 
of  the  China  Inland  Mission.  How  speedily  the  prayer  was 
answered  is  well  known ;  also  how  subsequently  the  specific  pe- 
tition for  "  seventy  new  workers  within  three  years  "  was  hon- 
ored; and  most  remarkable  of  all,  how,  in  1886,  the  definite 
request  for  "one  hundred  missionaries  and  money  for  their 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  379 

equipment"  was  offered  at  the  opening  of  the  year  with  such 
confidence  that  a  meeting  for  praise  was  held  to  return  thanks 
for  the  blessed  reply  which  the  months  would  and  did  bring. 
It  all  reads  like  the  veritable  romance  of  missions,  and  yet  it 
was  designed  of  God,  not  only  to  open  Inland  China  to  the 
Gospel,  but  to  incline  the  hearts  of  all  observing  believers  to  a 
new  confidence  in  prayer. 

Such  are  among  the  many  examples  which  might  be  cited  of 
a  renewed  manifestation  of  the  spirit  of  prayer,  and  to  that 
spirit  are  to  be  traced,  in  largest  measure,  all  the  great  mis- 
sionary and  benevolent  activities  of  the  church,  during  the 
century  just  ending. 

Such  a  prayer  movement,  as  is  not  unnatural,  has  been  marked 
by  certain  occasional  extravagances,  and  by  partial  misinter- 
pretations of  the  marvellous  promises  of  God  upon  which 
confidence  in  prayer  is  based.  In  this  connection  might  be 
mentioned,  as  illustrative,  the  movement  which  has  been  known 
as  "  faith  healing  ",  or  "  spiritual  healing  ",  which  has  relied 
upon  the  efficacy  of  "  the  prayer  of  faith."  Such  reference 
should  be  made  if  only  to  state  again  the  impropriety  of  con- 
fusing such  a  movement  with  "  Christian  Science  "  or  "  mental 
therapy  ".  ''  Christian  Science  "  is  anti-Christian,  involving  a 
false  philosophy  and  a  false  religion.  It  denies  the  existence  of 
matter,  the  personality  of  God,  the  guilt  of  sin,  the  deity  and 
work  of  Christ.  "  Psycho-therapy  "  has  no  necessary  connec- 
tion with  religion,  but  is  based  on  the  scientific  principle  of  the 
effect  of  "  mind  upon  matter  " ;  it  endeavors  to  influence  physi- 
cal conditions  by  mental  states  and  processes.  It  is  at  times 
allied  with  certain  religious  doctrines;  and  at  others  with  the 
usual  practice  of  therapeutics. 

"  Faith  healing  ",  however,  is  wholly  a  religious  movement. 
Its  followers  normally  hold  all  the  doctrines  of  Christianity; 
only  their  understanding  of  the  promises  relative  to  prayer 
are  such  as  to  lead  them  to  abandon,  in  cases  of  bodily  sick- 
ness, all  suggested  means,  and  rely  wholly  upon  "  the  prayer 
of  faith  ".  In  meeting  this  theory,  or  in  opposing  this  practice, 
one  should  be  careful  to  admit  that  God  can  and  may  effect 
cures  without  the  use  of  known  means,  but  should  maintain 
that  it  is  not  of  faith  to  dictate  either  what  God  is  to  do,  or 


380  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

how  he  is  to  do  it.  Submission  is  of  the  very  essence  of  prayer. 
Nor  are  we  to  insist  upon  the  use  of  some  particular  means; 
scientists  still  differ  as  to  methods  of  treatment.  Above  all  we 
should  remember  that  there  is  a  greater  temptation  among 
Christians  to  resort  to  means  without  prayer  than  to  depend 
upon  prayer  without  means. 

Even  such  side  currents  as  "  faith-healing  "  suggest  what 
the  direction  of  the  stream  has  been.  There  are  similar  sug- 
gestions to  be  found  in  the  appointment  of  special  seasons  for 
prayer.  Among  these,  the  most  notable  is  that  at  the  opening 
of  the  year,  when  according  to  the  request  of  missionaries 
in  India,  half  a  century  ago,  a  special  week  has  been  observed 
annually  as  a  period  of  prayer  "  for  the  evangelization  of  the 
world  ".  Such  too  are  the  days  of  "  prayer  for  colleges  ",  and 
the  days  of  "  prayer  for  young  men  ".  In  later  years  these 
have  been  observed  too  much  as  days  of  preaching  rather  than 
as  days  of  prayer.  In  most  churches,  also,  the  weekly  prayer 
meeting  is  being  displaced  by  a  lecture,  or  maintained  as  a  mere 
formal  service.  The  time  has  come  for  a  new  and  definite 
movement.  There  must  be  a  new  resort  to  prayer.  The  en- 
couragement has  been  given  by  providential  examples  and 
credible  witnesses.  If  the  church  is  to  succeed  in  accomplish- 
ing the  great  activities  now  projected,  if  she  is  to  enter  the 
doors  open  before  her,  it  can  only  be  possible  by  a  revival  of 
the  spirit  and  practice  of  believing  prayer. 

V 

Fellowship. 

Prayer  is  not  only  petition  but  also  communion;  it  sug- 
gests not  merely  intercession  but  fellowship;  and  many  mod- 
ern writers  and  speakers  express  a  definite  longing  for  a  more 
real  and  conscious  and  direct  communion  with  the  Divine. 
Such  a  desire  and  such  a  professed  experience  is  characterized 
as  "  modern  mysticism  ".  There  are  and  ever  have  been  forms 
of  mysticism  which  are  perilous,  fanatical,  and  unscriptural ; 
but,  in  a  certain  sense,  all  Christians  are  mystics,  although 
not  all  mystics  are  Christians.  The  Bible  is  ever  emphasizing 
the  privilege  of  divine  fellowship,  and  suggesting  the  possi- 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  381 

bility  of  meeting  with  God  "  face  to  face  ".  Paul  has  not  been 
improperly  characterized  as  a  "  practical  mystic  " ;  and  it  is  not 
difficult  to  discern  the  mystical  elements  in  the  teachings  of  St. 
Augustine ;  nor  can  one  deny  a  certain  reality  in  the  experiences 
of  a  St.  Francis ;  while  St.  Bernard,  the  mystic,  speaks  for  the 
hearts  of  uncounted  believers  as  he  sings: 

"  Jesus,  the  very  thought  of  thee 
With  sweetness  fills  my  breast ; 
But  sweeter  far  thy  face  to  see 
And  in  thy  presence  rest." 

As  a  modern  writer  has  suggested :  "  As  soon  as  there  comes 
a  consciousness  of  a  divine  response,  in  prayer  or  sacrament, 
a  sense  of  providential  guidance,  and  faith  begins  to  be  con- 
firmed by  experience,  the  resulting  state  may  be  called  mystical, 
since  it  involves  a  conviction  of  personal  communion  with 
God,  of  contact,  in  one  degree  or  another,  with  divine  reality. 
All  Christian  life,  therefore,  which  is  sustained  by  this  con- 
viction is  mystical  at  heart."  This  state  has  been  common  to 
the  greater  number  of  Christians  in  all  ages,  but  it  has  been 
especially  emphasized  by  certain  modern  teachers. 

It  may  be  noted  that,  in  many  minds,  confusion  has  been 
caused  by  the  contrasted  phrases  used  in  describing  this  state. 
Some  today  are  speaking  continually,  as  did  Jeremy  Taylor  and 
"  Brother  "  Lawrence,  of  "  The  Practice  of  the  Presence  of 
God  ",  others,  as  has  been  already  suggested,  dwell  upon  "  The 
Spirit-Filled  Life  ",  while  others  emphasize  the  truth  of  "  The 
Indwelling  Christ ".  To  many,  a  totally  different  experience 
is  suggested  by  each  different  phrase ;  and  the  question  is  being 
asked,  most  earnestly :  "  Should  we  seek  for  the  conscious 
presence  of  the  Father,  the  Spirit  or  the  Son."  It  suggests 
another  familiar  question :  *'  In  prayer,  should  we  address  the 
Father  or  the  Son  or  the  Holy  Spirit?"  To  the  second  ques- 
tion, it  may  be  safe  to  reply,  that  there  can  be  no  impropriety  in 
addressing  any  one  of  the  three  persons  of  the  adorable  trinity ; 
but  the  more  common  scriptural  usage  suggests  prayer  to  the 
Father,  in  the  name  of  the  Son,  by  the  power  of  the  Spirit.  So 
to  the  question  occasioned  by  the  varying  phrases  of  the  mod- 


382 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 


ern  exponents  of  a  true  Christian  mysticism,  it  may  be  replied, 
that  the  experiences  indicated  are  all  identical,  in  so  far  as  they 
express  the  presence  and  indwelling  of  God.  We  have  not 
three  Gods,  and  where  one  person  of  the  Trinity  is  present,  the 
others  are  present  also.  The  Holy  Spirit  has  not  come  to  take 
the  place  of  an  absent  Christ,  but  to  make  manifest  a  Christ 
who  is  present.  It  was  the  Son  who  said,  in  conection  with 
the  work  of  the  Spirit:  "  If  a  man  love  me,  he  will  keep  my 
word;  and  my  Father  will  love  him,  and  zve  will  come  unto 
him  and  make  our  abode  with  him."  It  may,  however,  be  sug- 
gested that  the  more  frequent  expressions  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment would  indicate  that  in  the  matter  of  this  divine  fellow- 
ship it  is  well  to  emphasize  the  relation  of  the  soul  to  God  as 
Father.  Christ  declared  himself  to  be  the  way :  "  No  man 
cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  me."  "  Through  him,"  writes 
Paul,  "  we  have  our  access  in  one  Spirit  unto  the  Father." 

A  still  more  important  question  has  been  raised  by  the 
modern  mystics  who  have  brought  their  helpful  message  to  an 
age  of  materialism  and  naturalism :  "  How  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  divine  presence  to  be  secured?"  In  spite  of  much 
that  has  been  written  to  the  contrary,  in  spite  of  many  mislead- 
ing but  popular  figurative  expressions,  it  should  be  maintained 
that  the  human  soul  does  not  have  an  immediate  and  direct 
consciousness  of  God.  There  is  merely  an  acceptance  of 
what  God  has  revealed  of  himself  as  recorded  in  the  Scrip- 
tures ;  faith  accepts  what  is  said  of  his  presence  and  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  communion  with  him;  acting  upon  this  belief  there 
comes  to  the  soul  a  validating,  by  experience,  of  the  truth 
believed,  and  so  an  assurance  of  "  the  presence  of  God  ",  "  the 
power  of  the  Spirit  ",  or  ''  the  indwelling  Christ  ".  Many  a 
heart  is  sorely  distressed  by  the  feeling  that  God  is  very  far  off ; 
even  in  the  moment  of  prayer  there  is  no  sense  of  His  presence ; 
and  so  doubts  arise  as  to  the  state  of  the  soul,  self-condemna- 
tion is  felt  because  an  experience  is  lacking  which  is  supposed 
to  be  common  and  necessary  to  all  Christians;  and  thus  dis- 
couragement issues  in  despair.  It  would  not  be  just  to  attri- 
bute such  frequent  and  painful  experiences  to  the  influence  of 
the  modern  teachers  under  consideration ;  only  it  does  seem  at 
times,  that  they  should  show  more  clearly  that  the  state  they  are 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  383 

describing  is  not  due  merely  to  nature  or  a  "  new-birth  ",  but  to 
the  simple  acceptance,  by  faith,  of  revealed  truth.  The  recorded 
words  of  our  Lord  and  his  apostles  thus  form  the  ground 
of  our  belief  in  the  presence  of  God.  As  Lord  Tennyson  once 
remarked  to  a  friend :  "  God  is  with  us  on  this  down,  as  we 
two  are  talking  together,  just  as  truly  as  Christ  was  with  the 
two  disciples  on  the  way  to  Emmaus.  We  cannot  see  him,  but 
he,  the  Father  and  the  Saviour  and  the  Spirit,  is  nearer,  per- 
haps, now  than  then,  to  those  who  are  not  afraid  to  hear  the 
words  of  the  apostles  about  the  actual  and  real  presence  of  God 
and  His  Christ  with  all  who  yearn  for  it." 

It  should  also  be  noted  that  the  modern  Christian  mystic  has 
not  wholly  escaped  the  peril  which  has  beset  the  mystics  of  all 
the  ages,  namely,  of  using  phrases,  if  not  claiming  experiences, 
which  suggest  the  loss  of  human  personality  by  an  absorption 
into  the  divine.  This  has  been  particularly  the  peril  of  those 
who  have  dealt  with  the  inspiring  and  blessed  truth  of  ''  the 
Indwelling  Christ."  Some  have  accepted  with  too  great  literal- 
ness  the  words  of  the  Revised  Version :  "I  have  been  crucified 
with  Christ,  and  it  is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  liveth 
in  me  " ;  or  that  other  fruitful  phrase ;  "  For  to  me  to  live  is 
Christ."  They  have  asserted  or  suggested  that  their  being 
has  been  lost  in  Christ,  so  that  their  actions  and  emotions  are 
those  of  Christ ;  as  a  Christian  worker  of  world-wide  notoriety 
recently  declared  in  public :  "  I  died  with  Christ,  and  now  my 
thoughts  are  the  thoughts  of  Christ,  my  resolutions 
are  those  of  Christ;  yes,  I  have  the  actual  blood  of 
Christ  flowing  in  my  veins."  The  perilous  implications 
of  such  pantheistic  utterances  are  at  once  apparent.  One 
cannot  insist  too  strongly  today  upon  the  eternal  persistence 
of  personality.  The  most  blessed  conceivable  experience 
of  the  soul  will  ever  be  that  of  a  personal  relation  to  a 
personal  God.  The  mistake,  in  connection  with  the  passage 
from  Galatians,  is  in  forgetting  that  the  apostle  at  once  adds : 
"  And  that  life  which  I  now  live  in  the  flesh  I  live  in  faith, 
the  faith  which  is  in  the  Son  of  God";  so  that  "The  In- 
dwelling Christ  "  should  never  suggest  a  mere  subjective  ex- 
perience but  a  conscious  and  continued  dependence  upon  an 
objective  Christ.     So  too  the  phrase  "  For  to  me  to  live  is 


384  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

Christ  "  should  be  read  in  the  context  of  the  chapter,  and  it 
will  probably  be  found  to  mean  that  the  service  of  Christ 
was  the  ideal  and  sum  of  the  apostle's  life,  and  certainly  was 
never  intended  to  even  suggest  the  absorption  of  personality  or 
the  loss  of  personal  identity. 

It  should,  however,  be  remarked  at  once,  and  with  great 
emphasis,  that  the  truth  suggested  by  the  phrase,  "  The  In- 
dwelling Christ  ",  has  come  into  many  lives,  in  recent  years, 
with  a  transforming  and  transfiguring  power.  There  has  been 
no  thought  of  a  transfusion  of  natures,  or  of  a  loss  of  conscious 
responsibility,  or  the^  absorption  of  personality ;  yet  the  con- 
sciousness that  the  divine  Christ  was  really  present,  at  every 
hour,  to  strengthen,  to  guide,  to  control,  and  to  effect  through 
the  surrendered  life  his  own  gracious  purposes,  has  effected  a 
spiritual  revolution,  resulting  in  holiness  and  power  and  peace. 
However  wise  it  may  be  to  carefully  safeguard  the  sacred 
boundaries  of  personality,  the  Church  needs  to  be  reminded  of 
all  the  inspiring  implications  of  the  Master's  promise :  "  Lo, 
I  am  with  you  always,"  and  to  believe  more  in  the  reality  of  the 
experience  embodied  in  the  hymn  of  the  Huguenot : 

"  I  have  a  Friend  so  precious, 

So  very  dear  to  me;  % 

He  loves  me  with  such  tender  love, 

He  loves  so  faithfully, 
I  could  not  live  apart  from  him, 

I  love  to  feel  him  nigh, 
And  so  we  dwell  together, 

My  Lord  and  I." 

But  Christian  fellowship  denotes  not  only  a  divine  com- 
munion, but  a  human  fellowship  which  the  divine  makes  pos- 
sible and  by  which  it  can  be  strengthened.  Not  the  least  help- 
ful of  modern  movements  therefore,  have  been  those  de- 
signed to  unite  believers  in  a  common  effort  to  increase  the 
knowledge  of  spiritual  realities  and  to  attain  the  higher 
spiritual  possibilities.  The  reference  is  not  to  the  movement 
for  church  union  and  Christian  cooperation,  significant  as 
these  may  be;  but  rather  to  those  voluntary  gatherings  of 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  385 

Christians  intended  to  cultivate  that  life  which  may  be  ex- 
pressed in  such  ecclesiastical  movements  or  in  the  various 
forms  of  modern  Christian  activity. 

A  single  recent  issue  of  an  English  weekly  contained  the 
announcements  of  twenty-two  conventions  to  be  held  for  the 
specified  purpose  of  "  deepening  the  spiritual  life  ".  These  are 
indicative  of  the  large  number  of  similar  gatherings  being 
held  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  The  attendance  varies  from 
the  little  groups  of  intimate  friends  to  the  vast  assemblies  of 
many  thousands.  The  exercises  consist  commonly  in  praise 
and  prayer,  in  Bible  study,  and  in  conference  upon  various 
phases  of  Christian  life  and  service. 

Such  gatherings  are  obviously  beset  by  their  peculiar  perils. 
They  minister  in  part  to  some  who  prefer  the  delights  of  re- 
ligious excitement  to  the  dull  monotony  of  active  service,  and 
to  others  who  mistake  their  growing  admiration  for  popular 
speakers  as  increased  devotion  to  Christ.  They  seem  to 
strengthen  the  belief  of  still  others  in  the  fallacy  that  spiritual 
growth  is  necessarilly  conditioned  upon  special  places  and 
times.  However,  when  the  largest  possible  deductions  have 
been  made,  the  net  result  of  these  gatherings  has  been  of  in- 
calculable benefit  to  the  church  of  Christ.  Multitudes  of 
Christians  have  been  strengthened  in  their  faith,  and  quickened 
in  their  zeal,  and  prepared  for  larger  and  more  fruitful  ser- 
vice. 

Possibly  the  best  known  of  the  summer  Conferences  have 
been  those  of  Keswick,  and  Mildmay  and  Northfield.  What- 
ever in  other  days  may  have  been  found  to  criticize  in  "  Kes- 
wick teaching  ",  it  is  now  most  careful  and  conservative  and 
scriptural.  The  inspiration  and  authority  of  the  Bible,  the 
regenerating  and  sanctifying  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the 
obligation  of  world-wide  missionary  enterprise,  and  the  per- 
sonal return  of  Christ,  are  among  the  doctrines  assumed  as 
fundamental.  Stress  is  laid  upon  the  privileges  and  possibili- 
ties of  the  Christian  life,  in  truer  holiness  and  in  more  com- 
plete consecration. 

The  Northfield  Conference,  established  by  Mr.  D.  L.  Moody 
in  1880,  at  his  own  home  in  Massachusetts,  has  attained  a 
world-wide  celebrity  and  influence.    According  to  the  opinion 


386  MODERN   SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

of  many  who  are  unfamiliar  with  its  history  and  character,  it 
is  supposed  to  teach  some  pecuHar  type  of  doctrine  or  to  ad- 
vocate some  particular  form  of  experience.  On  the  contrary  it 
stands  for  the  doctrines  universally  accepted  as  evangelical, 
and  maintains  as  its  platform  the  truth  of  the  divine  person  and 
redeeming  work  of  Christ  and  the  authority  of  Scripture  as 
the  word  of  God.  In  different  years  special  stress  has  been 
laid  upon  particular  phases  of  truth  and  life ;  the  widest  variety 
of  character  and  talent  and  ecclesiastical  connection  has  been 
represented  by  the  teachers ;  but  the  outstanding  feature  of  all 
the  conferences  has  been  the  manifest  aim  to  prepare  believers 
for  active  Christian  service. 

It  was  also  under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Moody,  and  at  Mount 
Hermon,  across  the  river  from  Northfield,  that  the  first  great 
summer  conference  for  students  was  held,  in  1886.  Among 
the  two  hundred  and  fifty  college  men  present,  some  twenty- 
three  were  already  pledged  to  service  in  the  foreign  field;  but 
before  the  conference  closed  the  number  had  increased  to  one 
hundred.  Two  of  these  were  chosen  to  visit  the  American 
colleges  and  to  present  the  claim  of  the  world-wide  work. 
Such  was  the  origin  of  "  The  Student  Volunteer  Movement 
for  Foreign  Missions  ",  which  has  furnished  recruits  for  every 
evangelical  missionary  society  and  has  made  its  impress  felt 
in  all  the  quarters  of  the  globe. 

These  conventions  are  named  simply  to  suggest  the  wide 
and  stimulating  influence  of  these  summer  gatherings.  Yet 
it  would  be  unfortunate  to  pass  without  notice  the  large  num- 
ber of  smaller  conferences  held  in  various  places  and  at  differ- 
ent seasons  of  the  year.  "  Quiet  Days  "  and  "  Retreats  "  and 
"  Meetings  for  Fellowship  "  have  been  observed  in  increasing 
numbers.  They  have  given  new  life  to  the  stated  services  and 
regular  activities  of  countless  churches  and  mission  stations. 
Such  seasons  of  communion  and  prayer  and  recollection  and 
exchange  of  views  and  experiences,  are  not  possible  for  all, 
but  are  to  be  prized  and  cherished  and  sought.  They  nurture 
and  express  the  life  which  is  found  in  all  sections  of  the 
Christian  church,  and  bring  to  mind  the  words  of  the  prophet : 
"  Then  they  that  feared  the  Lord  spake  often  one  to  another ; 
and  the  Lord  hearkened  and  heard  it,  and  a  book  of  remem- 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  387 

brance  was  written  before  him,  for  them  that  feared  the  Lord 
and  that  thought  upon  his  name." 


VI 
Knowledge. 

The  Niagara  Conference  antedated  by  a  few  years  the  Con- 
ference at  Northfield,  and  continued  its  meetings  for  more  than 
twenty-five  years.  It  exercised  a  wide  influence  in  estabhshing 
and  determining  the  nature  of  other  summer  conventions ;  yet 
it  maintained  a  character  absolutely  unique,  in  that  its  sessions 
were  devoted  exclusively  to  "  Bible  Study."  Few  inspirational 
or  devotional  addresses  were  delivered,  and  the  time  was 
wholly  occupied  by  the  exposition  of  Scripture.  That  which 
was  essential  at  Niagara  became  a  feature  of  all  subsequent 
conferences,  and  naturally  suggests  a  phase  of  spiritual  life 
which  has  been  strengthened  by  many  modern  movements; 
namely,  the  effort  to  secure  a  fuller  knowledge  of  the  revealed 
truth  of  God. 

The  past  century  has  been  an  era  of  Bible  Study.  It  has 
produced  a  notable  and  numerous  company  of  scholars  who 
have  attained  distinction  in  various  fields  of  Biblical  science, — 
in  exegesis,  in  historical  and  literary  and  textual  criticism,  in 
archaeology  and  Biblical  philology,  in  systematic  and  Biblical 
theology.  It  has  been  marked  by  the  appearance  of  new  ver- 
sions and  translations  and  editions  of  the  Bible,  copies  of 
which,  in  most  attractive  form  and  furnished  with  marginal 
references  and  with  notes  and  other  helps  for  the  reader,  have 
been  supplied  at  low  prices,  in  every  language,  and  scattered 
in  almost  countless  numbers  among  all  the  nations  of  the 
world.  New  methods  of  Bible  study  have  been  introduced, 
commentaries  have  been  published  adapted  to  every  class  of 
readers  and  an  unprecedented  interest  has  been  awakened  and 
maintained. 

However,  the  most  notable  movement  of  the  century,  in 
this  connection,  has  been  the  establishment  of  theological 
seminaries.  Of  the  nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  Protestant 
theological  institutions  in  America,  all  except  the  (Dutch) 
Reformed  at  New  Brunswick  (1784)  and  the  United  Presby- 


388  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

terian  at  Xenia  (1794)  were  founded  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Those  under  the  control  of  the  Presbyterian  Church 
were  established  as  follows:  Princeton  181 1,  Auburn  18 19, 
Western  1825,  Lane  1829,  McCormick,  1830,  Dubuque  1852, 
Danville  1853,  Biddle  1867,  Newark  1869,  San  Francisco  1871, 
Lincoln  (Theological  Department)  1871,  Omaha  1891.  Con- 
trary to  a  popular  misconception  these  are  all  schools  for  Bible 
study ;  all  of  their  curricula  are  designed  to  produce  *'  able 
ministers  of  the  word  ".  An  opposite  impression  has  been  pre- 
valent and  a  different  tendency  has  been  nojted,  due  in  part  to 
the  nomenclature  of  the  departments,  to  the  enforced  stress 
laid  upon  the  discussion  of  critical  theories,  to  the  consideration 
of  changing  conditions  in  the  church  and  in  society,  to  the 
study  of  the  vast  and  complicated  activities  of  modern  Christi- 
anity. Nevertheless,  there  is  manifest  on  every  hand  an  earn- 
est desire  to  maintain  the  original  purpose  and  to  produce,  as 
leaders  for  the  church  at  home  and  abroad,  ministers  who  are 
"  mighty  in  the  Scriptures  ". 

In  additions  to  these  institutions  there  have  recently  arisen 
a  number  of  Bible  Schools  and  Institutes,  designed  more  par- 
ticularly for  those  who  have  not  had  the  collegiate  training  ex- 
pected of  students  in  the  seminaries,  and  intended  to  train  lay- 
workers  who  are  to  serve  in  churches  at  home  and  in  various 
spheres  of  usefulness  on  the  foreign  field. 

Then,  too,  the  Young  Men*s  Christian  Association,  since 
its  first  inception  in  1844  has  sought  to  fulfill  the  original  aim 
of  its  founder  and  to  "develop  the  spiritual  well-fare  of  young 
men  "  by  religious  services  and  Bible  study.  One  of  the  inter- 
esting developments  of  recent  years  has  been  the  work  among 
the  colleges  and  universities  of  the  world.  In  America  alone 
nearly  thirty  thousand  college  students  are  enrolled  in  volun- 
tary study  classes. 

The  agency  for  promoting  Bible  study,  in  which  the  church 
should  feel  the  deepest  interest  and  concern  at  the  present  time, 
is  unquestionably,  the  Sabbath  School.  In  its  present  form  it 
is  a  modern  institution.  Founded  by  Robert  Raikes  of  Glouces- 
ter, England,  in  1780,  it  did  not  exist  as  a  church  institution 
nor  was  it  organized  as  an  association  until  early  in  the  last 
century ;  and  it  is  since  then  that  it  has  attained  its  marvellous 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  389 

growth,  until  it  now  numbers  some  twenty-five  million  schol- 
ars. It  has  now  become  practically  the  sole  agency  for  the 
religious  education  of  the  young.  It  is  to  be  deprecated  that, 
neither  in  **  day-school  "  nor  at  home,  attention  is  given,  to 
any  appreciable  extent,  to  Christian  instruction.  The  existing 
conditions  only  emphasize  the  duty  of  the  church  to  provide  for 
the  Sunday-School  even  better  methods  and  to  furnish  more 
careful  instruction,  that  the  coming  generation  may  from  child- 
hood "  know  the  holy  Scriptures  which  are  able  to  make  them 
wise  unto  salvation." 

An  increase  of  biblical  knowledge  is  absolutely  essential  for 
the  life  of  the  church.  Revealed  truth  is  the  instrument  used 
by  the  Spirit  in  His  renewing  and  sanctifying  work.  The 
study  of  the  word  without  the  guidance  of  the  Spirit  results 
in  rationalism ;  but  dependence  upon  the  guidance  of  the  Spirit 
without  the  study  of  the  word  results  in  fanaticism.  If  the 
church  is  to  continue  to  manifest  a  divine  life  by  her  evangel- 
istic and  missionary  and  beneficient  activities,  that  life  must  be- 
controlled  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  but  nourished  and  supported 
by  a  continual  appropriation  of  the  word  of  God. 

VII 
Hope. 

One  portion  of  biblical  teaching  which  has  received  special 
attention  during  the  past  century  is  that  which  is  related  to 
the  Return  of  our  Lord.  This  "  blessed  hope  "  has  ever  been 
an  essential  feature  of  Christian  experience,  and  its  quickening 
forms  an  essential  factor  in  those  movments  which  have  been 
making  for  the  maintenance  and  deepening  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  church. 

It  is  a  truth  which  the  New  Testament  brings  into  vital  con- 
nection with  every  Christian  virtue.  When  the  Master  incul- 
cated faithfulness  in  service  it  was  to  servants  who  were  told  to 
look  for  the  Lord's  return :  "Occupy  till  I  come."  When  he 
suggested  the  need  of  spiritual  life  and  vigilance  he  speaks  the 
parable  of  the  Bridegroom's  Return.  When  John  wishes  to 
impress  the  need  of  purity  in  life,  he  is  saying :  "  Abide  in  Him, 
that  ye  may  have  confidence  and  not  be  ashamed  before  Him 


390  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

at  His  coming ; . . . .  and  when  He  shall  appear  we  shall  be  like 

Him ; and  every  one  that  hath  this  hope  in  Him,  purifieth 

himself  even  as  He  is  pure."  When  James  suggests  patience 
under  provocation  and  in  spite  of  delay,  it  is  with  the  words : 
**  Be  ye  also  patient  for  the  coming  of  the  Lord  draweth  nigh." 
When  Paul  brings  comfort  to  those  in  bereavement  it  is  with 
the  blessed  assurance  that  "  the  Lord  Himself  shall  descend 
from  Heaven  ". 

By  this  hope  the  church  has  been  sustained  and  purified  in 
all  ages.  It  has  ^  embodied  the  belief  in  her  hymns  and  her 
creeds;  and  our  own  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith 
closes  with  these  significant  words :  "  So  will  He  have 
that  day  unknown  to  men,  that  they  may  shake  off  all  carnal 
security,  and  be  always  watchful,  because  they  know  not  at 
what  hour  the  Lord  will  come;  and  may  be  ever  prepared  to 
say,  Come,  Lord  Jesus,  come  quickly." 

Attention  has  been  called  to  this  doctrine  by  scholars  like 
Dean  Alford  and  Tregelles  and  Meyer,  by  preachers  like 
Spurgeon  and  the  brothers  Bonar,  and  McCheyne,  by  Moody 
and  many  living  evangelists,  by  the  "  Plymouth  Brethren  "  by 
conventions  like  Mildmay  and  Northfield,  by  special  "  prophetic 
conferences"  and  by  an  increasing  prophetic  literature.  Like 
most  important  truths  it  has  been  earnestly  debated  by  those 
who  differ  as  to  its  details  and  particulars,  and  it  has  been  piti- 
fully distorted  and  brought  into  disrepute  by  those  who  have 
borrowed  its  phrases  and  denied  its  realities.  Of  these  mod- 
ern perversions  possibly  the  most  dangerous  and  distressing  is 
that  which  has  been  konwn  as  ''  Millenial  Dawn  ".  This  is  a 
strange  conglomerate  of  heresies.  It  declares  Christ  to  have 
been  a  mere  creature,  asserts  that  in  the  incarnation  he  had 
but  one  nature,  that  his  death  was  that  of  a  mere  man,  that  his 
body  was  not  raised  from  the  dead,  but  that  Christ  became  di- 
vine after  his  death.  And,  as  to  the  Return  of  the  Lord,  in 
which  the  interest  of  the  system  centers,  it  is  taught  that 
"  Christ  came  to  earth  in  October  1874  ",  and  has  been  here  in 
actual  person  ever  since;  in  1878  all  "  the  saints  "  were  raised 
and  are  now  also  upon  earth  at  this  present  time;  in  188 1  all 
the  professing  Christian  systems,  the  "  denominations  ",  were 
repudiated  of  God  and  he  has  given  no  recognition  to  them 


MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS  391 

since;  the  end  of  the  present  order  of  things  takes  place  in 
1 91 4.  Such  are  the  teachings  received  by  great  throngs  of 
hearers  not  only  in  London  and  New  York  but  in  cities  and 
towns  throughout  England  and  America.  Such  are  the  vagar- 
ies contained  in  volumes  which  are  circulated,  not  by  tens  of 
thousands,  but  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  three  editions  con- 
taining the  following  figures:  3,358,000;  1,132,000;  909,000. 
Such  instances  of  perverted  doctrine  should  only  awaken  the 
church  to  a  more  careful  study  of  the  Scriptures,  and  to  a  more 
earnest  proclamation  of  the  truth  as  it  is  contained  in  the 
word  of  God.  Such  faithful  testimony  could  not  fail  to  be 
used  of  the  Lord  in  deepening  the  spiritual  life  and  increasing 
the  devotion  of  the  Church ;  "  for  the  grace  of  God  that  bring- 
eth  salvation  hath  appeared,  teaching  us  that  denying  ungodli- 
ness and  worldly  lusts,  we  should  live  soberly,  righteously  and 
godly  in  this  present  world,  looking  for  that  blessed  hope  and 
the  glorious  appearing  of  the  great  God  and  our  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.'^ 

Conclusion 

Such  are  some  of  the  elements  in  Christian  experience  which 
modern  spiritual  movements  have  emphasized  and  developed. 
They  present  inspiring  possibilities  to  every  follower  of  Christ, 
and  indicate  lines  of  progress  which  each  can  hopefully  pur- 
sue. As,  at  the  very  first,  it  was  pointed  out  that  the  external 
activities  of  the  church  are  wholly  dependent  upon  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  church  for  their  continuance  and  growth,  so,  in  con- 
clusion, it  should  be  noted  that  this  corporate  life  is  absolutely 
conditioned  by  the  spiritual  strength  and  vigor  of  its  com- 
ponent members.  Reference  has  been  made  to  certain  gen- 
eral movements,  not  with  the  purpose  of  presenting  an  his- 
torical review,  but  of  securing  a  practical  result  in  the  encour- 
agement of  individual  believers  to  advance  in  spiritual  attain- 
ment, to  experience  what  is  real  and  vital  in  all  the  phases  of 
life  to  which  allusion  has  been  made,  to  strive  more  consciously 
to  attain  the  goal  towards  which,  in  all  centuries  the  followers 
of  Christ  have  been  pressing, — the  goal  of  likeness  to  their 
Lord,  of  transformation  into  His  image, — "  the  prize  of  the 


392  MODERN    SPIRITUAL   MOVEMENTS 

high  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  ".  All  may  not  adopt  the 
same  methods,  all  may  not  choose  the  same  paths,  but  each 
should  seek  for  definite  progress.  The  ways  are  not  so  di- 
vergent as  is  sometimes  supposed.  Experiences  often  differ 
more  in  name  than  in  reality.  "  The  means  of  grace  "  are 
not  secret;  they  are  common  to  all  believers;  but  by  more 
faithfully  following  most  familiar  paths,  new  experiences  will 
be  known,  more  glorious  possibilities  will  burst  upon  the  view, 
more  perfectly  will  be  realized  the  fullness  of  life  in  Christ 
Jesus.  In  many  cases  the  advance  will  be  marked  by  definite 
spiritual  crises;  unsuspected  aspects  of  "  self  ^'  will  assert  them- 
selves to  be  conquered  and  subdued ;  "  weights  "  hindering  the 
progress,  but  long  regarded  as  innocent,  will  be  laid  aside  with 
definite  resolve ;  sudden  temptation  will  rise  in  ever  more  subtle 
and  surprising  forms,  to  be  withstood  and  overcome;  and 
all  this  may  mean  fierce  struggles  and  sudden  advances;  but, 
for  most  Christians,  the  progress  will  be  more  gradual,  step 
by  step,  hour  by  hour,  day  by  day ;  clouds  will  rise,  conflicts  be 
met,  only  in  their  case,  light  and  darkness,  peace  and  struggle 
will  seem  less  sharply  contrasted.  Uniformity  of  Christian 
experience  is  not  essential ;  what  is  necessary  is  the  continual  ef- 
fort and  resolution  and  courage  which  make  possible  individual 
progress.  By  the  faithful  use  of  proffered  means,  by  appropri- 
ating promised  grace,  each  one  can  advance,  can  inspire  others 
to  higher  experiences,  can  encourage  the  church  to  larger  at- 
tainments in  life  and  service,  can 

"  Strengthen  the  wavering  line, 

Stablish,  continue  our  march 

On,  to  the  bound  of  the  waste, 

On,  to  the  city  of  God.'' 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCI- 
PLINE 

Frederick  William  Loetscher 


Introduction.     The  practical  theological  disciplines;  their  relation  to  the 
theoretical  theological  sciences. 

The  practical  theological  disciplines  as^sciences  and  as  arts. 
Discussion. 

I.     Homiletics  as  a  science. 

1.  Etymology  and  history  of  the  word  *'  homiletics  ". 

2.  The  task  of  scientific  homiletics:  the  true  idea  of  preaching. 

a.  Homiletics  and  the  Scriptures. 

b.  Homiletics  and  the  church. 

c.  Homiletics  and  the  personality  of  the  preacher. 

3.  The  independence  of  homiletics  as  a  science :  the  relation 
of    homiletics   and    rhetoric,   historically   and    philosophically 

considered, 
n.    Homiletics  as  an  art. 

1.  Objections  to  the  use  of  "  art "  in  preaching. 

2.  Homiletic  art  as  a  synthetic  product. 

a.  The  results  of  theological  science. 

b.  General  culture. 

c.  Moral  and  spiritual  influences. 

3.  Homiletic  art  as  a  technique. 

a.  Making  the  theory  of  preaching  practical. 

b.  The  study  of  representative  preachers. 

c.  The  practice  of  the  art. 
Conclusion. 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOCxICAL  DISCI- 
PLINE^ 

Among  the  many  principles  which  either  philosophic  or 
utilitarian  interests  have  employed  in  organizing  the  various 
branches  of  theological  study  into  a  curriculum,  there  is  none 
more  natural  or  useful  than  that  which  divides  the  disciplines 
into  two  classes,  the  theoretical  and  the  practical.  It  was 
Schleiermacher  who  gave  the  first  adequate  treatment  of  this 
principle  in  his  discussion  of  the  subjects  belonging  to  this 
second  group,  the  so-called  practical  theology.  He  unfolded 
their  distinctive  genius  and  showed  their  peculiar  function  in 
the  service  of  the  church,  and  vindicated  for  them  a  place  of 
€qual  honor  and  dignity  by  the  side  of  the  other  disciplines. 
His  theological  encyclopaedia  is,  of  course,  open  to  the  ob- 
jection from  the  dogmatic  standpoint  that  it  undermines  the 
Protestant  principle  that  the  Bible  is  the  only  rule  of  faith. 
Nor  in  technical  respects  does  his  work  in  the  several  fields  of 
practical  theology  equal  the  creative  impulse  which  he  gave 
for  the  scientific  cultivation  of  the  whole  domain.  But  since 
his  time  it  is  an  established  view  in  the  world  of  theological 
education  that  the  very  existence  of  the  church  as  a  self -prop- 
agating institution  calls  for  a  science  of  its  living  functions. 

Into  how  many  distinct  divisions  this  knowledge  is  to  be  dis- 
tributed must  be  determined  in  the  light  of  concrete  ecclesiasti- 
cal developments.  Besides  homiletics,  which  we  may  provis- 
ionally regard  as  a  part  of  the  necessary  service  of  the  Word, 
there  have  thus  far  been  erected,  in  the  ever-expanding  circle 
of  practical  theological  sciences,  the  following :  liturgies,  or  the 
science  of  public  worship;  catechetics,  or  the  science  of  the 
religious  training  of  the  young  and  the  spiritually  immature; 

^This  discussion  contains  the  substance  of  an  Inaugural  Address  de- 
livered in  Miller  Chapel,  September  24,  191 1. 


396        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

poimenics,  or  the  science  of  pastoral  care;  halieutics,  or  the 
science  of  evangelistic  and  missionary  endeavor;  archagics, 
or  the  science  of  organized  Christian  work  in  the  congregation. 
We  do  not  mention  ecclesiology  or  sociology  in  this  connec- 
tion, for  these  subjects  ought  rather  to  be  treated  as  belong- 
ing to  the  theoretical  sciences. 

Now,  all  these  so-called  practical  theological  sciences  have 
this  as  their  essential  characteristic:  they  are,  alike  in  the 
etymological  and  in  the  common  meaning  of  the  words,  both 
theoretical  and  practical.  That  is,  they  are,  on  the  one  hand, 
sciences  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term ;  on  th"e  other  hand,  they 
are  sciences  which  have  it  as  the  one  and  only  reason  of  their 
existence  that  they  transfer  into  the  realm  of  life  and  activity 
all  that  has  been  yielded  for  their  special  benefit  by  the  other, 
the  purely  theoretical  theological  sciences.  These  latter  deal 
solely  with  knowledge,  the  knowledge,  we  may  say,  of  the  es- 
sence and  of  the  historical  manifestations  of  Christianity, 
They,  too,  may  be,  and  by  their  professors  in  theological  sem- 
inaries commonly  will  be  called  practical.  And  so,  of  course, 
they  are ;  but  only  in  that  broader  sense  that  they  are  capable 
of  being  made  to  serve  some  end  that  in  the  narrower  sense  of 
the  word  is  practical.  In  fine,  dogmatics,  ethics,  the  various 
exegetical  and  historical  sciences,  whatever  other  worth  they 
may  have,  exist  for  the  sake  of  the  church.  And  just  because, 
when  rightly  cultivated  they  do  not  commonly  carry  upon  their 
faces  the  indications  of  their  ecclesiastical  value,  it  becomes 
necessary  to  have  another  science,  or  rather  group  of  sciences, 
that  will  deal  with  this  very  problem  of  the  inner  and  necessary 
relation  of  the  theoretical  disciplines  to  the  varied  functions  of 
the  church. 

It  must  at  once  be  added,  however,  that  these  practical 
sciences  may  never  rest  in  the  domain  of  mere  knowledge. 
The  iTTKTTTJ/JLrj  must  become  a  rex^rj.  Practical  theology  as 
a  science  will  have  its  theoretical  elements;  but  these  will  al- 
ways have  reference  to  an  efficient  ecclesiastical  practice.  Pre- 
supposing as  a  historic  and  present  necessity  the  distinction 
between  the  clergy  and  the  laity,  practical  theology  labors  to 
train,  by  every  means  within  its  power — the  theoretical  theo- 
logical sciences  being  one  of  the  most  important — a  succession 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        397 

of  ministers  of  the  gospel  who  will  be  ''  thoroughly  furnished 
unto  every  good  work  " ;  and  this  task  will  continue  until  by 
its  performance  the  entire  \a6<i  will  have  become  the  real 
Kkripo'i  of  the  Lord.  Meanwhile,  Vinet's  pointed  characteriza- 
tion of  practical  theology  as  a  whole  is  true  of  every  one  of 
its  branches :  "  It  is  the  art  after  the  science,  or  the  science 
resolving  itself  into  an  art." 

In  the  light  of  these  general  principles  we  may  now  dis- 
pose of  the  preliminary  question  touching  the  mode  in  which 
homiletics,  one  of  these  practical  theological  disciplines,  is  to  be 
taught.  Historically,  the  two  possible  extremes  in  method 
have  presented  themselves,  the  purely  scientific  and  the  merely 
empirical.  The  former  is  interested  only  in  the  determination 
of  the  idea  of  preaching.  The  latter,  looking  solely  at  the 
actual  exercise  of  his  powers  by  the  young  homilete  deals  only 
with  the  most  practical  suggestions  that  can  add  to  his  im- 
mediate efficiency  and  skill.  Neither  of  these  views  alone  is 
justifiable.  The  claims  of  both  must  be  united.  A  course  in 
homiletics  that  does  not  teach  the  student  how  to  preach  would 
not  be  entitled  to  any  place  in  the  schedule  of  seminary  studies. 
But  this  does  not  mean,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  work  of 
the  future  preacher  is  to  be  treated  as  a  mere  handicraft.  Con- 
sidered, then,  as  a  theological  discipline,  that  is  as  one  of  the 
studies  incorporated  into  every  good  training  school  for  the 
ministry,  homiletics  must  be  treated  both  as  a  science  and  as 
an  art;  in  other  words,  as  an  applied  science,  or  as  a  science 
that  resolves  itself  into  an  art. 

In  the  development  of  my  theme,  therefore,  I  shall 
proceed,  in  the  first  place,  to  set  forth  the  idea  or  task  of  homi- 
letics as  an  independent  theological  science,  and  in  the  sec- 
ond place,  to  indicate  the  method  by  which  I  shall  try  to  teach 
homiletics  as  a  practical  theological  art. 

The  very  name  "  homiletics  "  points  us  to  the  distinctive 
subject-matter  of  this  science  and  the  essential  nature  of  its 
task.  Etymology,  here  as  so  often  in  the  case  of  our  theo- 
logical disciplines,  is  a  safer  guide  than  any  a  priori  construc- 
tions can  be.  The  term  is  derived  from  the  Greek  6fii\{a, 
which,  alike  in  classical  and  in  New  Testament  usage,  preserves 
more  or  less  of  its  original  along  with  the  derived  meanings — 


398        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

a  meeting  in  one  place,  an  assemblage,  mutual  intercourse, 
friendly  conversation  upon  the  basis  of  common  interests.  In 
the  four  or  five  instances  in  which  the  noun  or  verb  is  found 
in  the  New  Testament,  the  word  denotes  a  converse  that  pre- 
supposes a  kinship  in  disposition,  a  sympathetic  communion. 
In  the  early  church  the  term  became  somewhat  technical,  sig- 
nifying the  brotherly,  familiar,  edifying  address  made  in  con- 
nection with  the  Scripture  lesson  at  the  private  assemblies  of 
the  Christians  for  worship.  Out  of  this  address,  quite  col- 
loquial in  its  simplicity,  grew  the  more  formal  religious  dis- 
course which  became  in  time,  next  to  the  celebration  of  the 
eucharist,  the  principal  feature  of  the  church  service.  Pres- 
ently, the  conception  of  the  oixCkia  was  in  a  double  fashion 
restricted.  On  the  one  hand,  the  word  was  limited  to  the  re- 
ligious address  made  to  the  community  of  believers,  the  truly 
Christian  congregation,  while  the  term  KijpvyfjLa,  the  herald's 
proclamation  of  the  good  tidings,  was  used  to  denote  evange- 
listic or  missionary  preaching.  On  the  other  hand,  as  the 
preaching  of  the  church  came  more  and  more  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  classical  traditions  of  eloquence,  the  word 
ojuXCa  came  to  mean  what  we  ordinarily  understand  by  our 
"  homily  ",  a  discourse  preserving  in  large  measure  the  simpler 
structure  and  style  of  the  primitive  religious  address,  which 
was  often  nothing  but  a  quite  artless  series  of  comments  on 
the  chosen  Scriptural  passage,  while  the  more  pretentious  and 
elaborate  synthetic  discourses  were  called  Xo7ot,  orationes, 
tractatus,  sermones.  Throughout  its  history,  however,  even  in 
the  golden  age  of  expository  preaching,  when  the  homily  itself 
became  a  more  artistic  production,  the  root  idea  of  the  word 
was  never  lost  sight  of.  Whatever  its  form  may  have  been, 
the  sermon  was  essentially  a  necessary  manifestation  of  the 
life  of  the  church  striving  to  realize  its  true  aim  in  self -propa- 
gation, a  unique  expression  of  that  vital  principle  that  every- 
where organized  congregations  of  those  feeling  themselves  a 
community  of  believers  in  Christ  Jesus. 

Here,  then,  in  the  very  philosophy  of  Christianity  as  a 
spiritual  force  in  human  history  do  we  find  the  basis  of  homi- 
letics  as  an  independent  science.  In  the  beginning  was  the 
Word.     In  time,  the  Word,  becoming  incarnate,  achieved  a 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        399 

gospel.  It  wrought  a  work,  it  performed  an  act,  so  full  of 
divine  power,  that  scarcely  had  its  redeeming  efficacy  become 
manifest  to  men,  when  there  sprang  into  being  under  the 
creative  influence  of  this  deed  of  grace,  the  three  distinctive 
elements  of  the  characteristically  Christian  institution  of 
preaching :  the  Bible,  or  the  completed  inspired  record  and  in- 
terpretation of  the  redemptive  work  itself;  the  church  or  the 
society  of  believers  regenerated  by  the  Holy  Spirit;  and  the 
ministry,  or  the  succession  of  officers  qualified  and  called  of 
God  to  herald  or  teach  the  glad  tidings  of  salvation.  Scientific 
homiletics,  having  as  its  task  the  development  of  the  true  idea 
of  preaching,  will  therefore  deal  chiefly  with  these  three 
closely  connected  problems :  the  sermon  in  its  relation  to  Holy 
Scripture;  the  sermon  in  its  relation  to  the  church;  and  the 
sermon  in  its  relation  to  the  personality  of  the  preacher. 

I  can  only  allude  to  some  of  the  more  important  questions 
that  must  be  discussed  in  this  domain,  if  the  homilete  is  to 
have  an  adequate  theory  of  his  art. 

So  far  as  the  Bible  is  concerned,  history  has  abundantly 
showed  that  Christianity  lives  in  and  through  its  Word;  that 
is,  by  the  faithful  reproduction  of  the  apostolic  message  in  the 
form  of  a  personal  testimony  to  its  content.  It  is  in  no  sense 
an  accident,  but  on  the  contrary  a  necessary  consequence  of 
the  different  ecclesiastical  principles  involved,  that  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  does  not  give  the  Word  the  place  of  honor 
it  has  normally  held  in  Protestantism.  The  sacerdotium  there 
eclipses  the  ministerium  verbi.  Doubless,  in  evangelical 
churches  the  sermon  has  often  received  a  one-sided  emphasis 
to  the  serious  detriment  of  other  parts  of  the  service.  Still, 
it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  by  as  much  as  the  pulpit 
is  thrust  back,  the  altar  comes  forward.  Spiritual  religion 
must  magnify  the  Word,  the  Word  of  God  and  the  word  of 
the  man  who  truly  preaches  the  Word  of  God. 

It  goes  without  saying,  therefore,  that  the  evangelical  homi- 
lete, when  he  inquires  as  to  the  relation  of  the  Bible  to  the 
right  idea  of  preaching,  will  find  all  manner  of  questions  pre- 
senting themselves.  I  can  only  mention  a  few  of  the  more 
important  by  way  of  illustration.  I  say  nothing  here  of  such 
matters  as  the  lower  and  the  higher  criticism  of  the  Biblical 


400 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 


documents,  though  it  is  at  once  apparent  that  these  contro- 
versies have  their  part  to  play  in  fashioning  the  minister's 
notions  concerning  his  authority  as  a  spokesman  of  the 
Lord.  Indeed,  this  whole  question  of  the  authority  of 
the  preacher  calls  for  a  clear  understanding  of  his  pre- 
rogatives and  duties.  In  what  sense  is  he  an  ambassador 
of  Jesus  Christ?  To  what  extent  does  he  belong  to  the  suc- 
cession of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  the  Apostles?  Again, 
what  does  preaching  Christ  mean  ?  How  much  does  the  word 
of  the  cross  include?  What,  if  anything,  has  the  message  of 
the  modern  pulpit  to  do  with  social  and  political  affairs?  How 
is  the  Old  Testament  to  be  made  homiletically  available? 
What  is  the  homiletic  accent  of  the  Bible  in  theology?  Or 
perchance,  can  and  may  theology,  as  some  aver,  be  kept  out 
of  the  pulpit?  What  is  the  office  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  con- 
nection with  the  preaching  of  the  gospel?  In  what  respects 
is  Jesus  to  be  taken  as  the  model  preacher? 

These  and  kindred  questions  are  so  intimately  related  to  the 
very  idea  of  the  sermon  that  no  homiletics,  worthy  of  the 
name  of  science,  can  afford  to  ignore  them.  But  this  is  not 
the  place  to  attempt  a  detailed  answer  for  any  of  them.  Suffice 
it  to  say  that  the  main  task  here  will  be  the  inductive  presenta- 
tion from  the  Bible  itself  of  the  apostolic  as  the  original  and 
normative  type  of  preaching.  For  the  Scriptures  are  to  the 
preacher  something  more  than  a  mere  collection  of  suggestive 
and  inspiring  motto-texts.  They  are  themselves  the  great 
sermon — not  merely  the  inexhaustibly  fertile  but  the  supremely 
authoritative  homiletic  treatment  of  the  redemptive  facts  that 
form  the  historic  basis  of  our  faith.  The  homilete's  relation 
to  the  Bible  is  always  essentially  expository.  He  is  not  to 
read  his  thoughts  into  the  sacred  words  that  give  him  his 
message,  but  on  the  contrary  he  is  to  make  their  meaning  his 
own. 

In  order,  therefore,  to  ascertain  the  right  idea  of  the  ser- 
mon, scientific  homiletics  must,  in  the  first  instance,  go  to  the 
Scriptures  themselves  to  learn  what  preaching  was  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions,  and  at  its  highest  and  therefore 
normative  development,  in  the  apostolic  age.  Indeed,  few 
studies  preliminary  to  practical  work  in  homiletics  will  be 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        401 

more  fruitful  than  those  devoted  to  the  consideration  of  the 
various  terms  used  in  the  New  Testament  to  set  forth  the 
work  of  the  minister  as  a  preacher;  such  as  herald,  ambassa- 
dor, evangelist,  teacher,  steward,  nurse,  shepherd,  messenger, 
and,  above  all,  witness.  This  last  has  been  especially  exploited 
by  Christlieb  in  his  Homiletics.  It  is  by  far  the  richest  and 
most  comprehensive  designation  of  the  preacher's  function, 
and  the  extreme  frequency  of  its  occurrence,  in  the  simple  and 
compound  forms  ot  the  word,  has  led  this  author  to  the  serious 
proposal  of  substituting  the  name  martyretics  for  homiletics. 
And  undoubtedly  it  gives  the  most  vital  conception  of  this 
whole  art.  It  is  elastic  enough  to  embrace  both  pastoral  and 
missionary  preaching.  It  does  a  more  ample  justice  than  any 
other  to  the  personality  of  the  preacher,  emphasizing  the  per- 
sonal security  he  feels  for  the  reality  of  that  which  he  pro- 
claims. But,  not  to  dwell  upon  such  a  detail,  the  idea  of 
preaching  must  be  further  determined  in  the  light  which  these 
characteristic  terms  cast  upon  its  aim  or  purpose.  Historically, 
two  views  have  vied  with  each  other.  Many  would  limit  homi- 
letic  theory  strictly  to  congregational,  that  is  pastoral  or  "  edi- 
fying "  preaching.  Others,  paying  more  attention  to  the 
actual  conditions  of  our  churches,  in  which  it  is  by  no  means 
safe  to  treat  all  members,  much  less  all  worshippers  at  a 
given  service,  as  genuine  believers,  insist  that  homiletics  must 
expand  its  scope  to  include  evangelism.  Sickel  has  therefore 
suggested  a  new  name  for  our  science,  halieutics,  a  noun  de- 
rived from  the  Greek  verb  to  catch  fish,  the  allusion  being  to 
Christ's  promise  to  make  his  apostles  fishers  of  men.  And 
Stier  has  similarly  proposed  the  name  Ceryctics,  from  Kripv^, 
the  herald  who  proclaims  the  gospel  in  its  newness  to  the  un- 
converted, and  the  problem  of  the  subject-matter  of  preaching 
is  inseparably  connected  with  these.  Here  the  student  will 
need  to  consider  the  validity  of  what  have  been  called  the 
material  and  the  formal  principles  of  all  evangelical  homi- 
letics :  Christ  is  to  be  preached ;  and  the  Christ  to  be  preached 
is  the  Christ  of  the  Scriptures.  This  will  secure  for  the  cross 
of  Christ  the  same  central  significance  in  the  sermon  that  it  has 
in  the  gospel  itself.  Once  more,  the  ruling  spirit  in  which  the 
preacher  is  to  discharge  his  task  enters  as  an  essential  element 


402        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

into  the  idea  of  preaching  as  set  forth  in  the  Bible.  This  can 
be  no  other  than  the  consummate  Christian  grace,  the  love 
which  will  reflect  in  some  worthy  measure  the  love  by  which 
God  glorified  himself  in  the  salvation  of  men.  And  not  least 
will  this  part  of  scientific  homiletics  have  to  wrestle  with  the 
final  question,  How  can  a  modem  preacher  secure  for  his 
message  the  note  that  is  so  conspicuously  lacking  in  the  pulpit 
of  our  day,  the  note  of  authority? 

An  adequate  view  of  the  task  of  homiletics  must  further, 
as  we  have  said>  take  account  of  the  fact, that  preaching  pre- 
supposes not  only  a  public  but  a  church.  The  pulpit  is  not  a 
mere  platform.  The  society  of  believers  is  not  a  mere  natural 
brotherhood.  It  is  a  spiritual  (t>L\aBe\<l>ia,  The  proclamation 
of  the  message  of  faith  becomes  normally,  therefore,  an  es- 
sential part  of  the  church  service.  And  this  fact  in  turn  di- 
rectly and  powerfully  influences  the  very  idea  of  preaching. 
It  restricts  the  message  to  its  true  sphere,  that  of  religion.  It 
tends  to  make  and  keep  the  speaker  devout  and  reverent  and 
earnest.  It  stimulates  him  to  make  his  discourse  in  the  un- 
objectionable sense  of  the  term  artistic;  as  worthy  a  produc- 
tion as  he  can  make  it  for  the  honor  of  God  and  his  holy  house, 
and  for  the  delight  of  the  people  assembled  to  celebrate  their 
priceless  possessions  in  Christ  Jesus.  It  inspires  him  to  enter 
that  joy  of  the  Lord  which  is  itself  a  source  of  strength  for 
him  and  his  hearers.  Wherever,  therefore,  the  idea  of  the 
church  and  of  its  corporate  life  fades,  there  preaching  declines. 
As  another  has  said,  "  It  does  not  lose  in  interest,  or  in  the 
sympathetic  note,  but  it  loses  in  power,  which  is  the  first  thing 
in  a  Gospel.  If  the  preacher  but  hold  the  mirror  up  to  our 
finer  nature  the  people  soon  forget  what  manner  of  men  they 
are  ".^ 

And  this  becomes  the  more  apparent  when  we  remember  that 
even  congregational  preaching  does  not  exhaust  itself  in  the 
mere  elevation  or  improvement  of  the  worship  as  such.  For 
while  the  latter  is  intended  only  to  express,  for  the  glory  of 
God,  the  existing  faith  of  the  people,  the  sermon  is  an  effective 
work  in  which  the  expression  of  the  common  or  ideal  faith 

'  Forsythe,  Positive  Preaching  and  the  Modern  Mind,  p.  86. 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        403 

aims  at  an  ever-deepening  influence  upon  the  church  mem- 
bers and  through  them  upon  the  world  without.  The  preacher 
represents  the  progressive  and  dynamic,  as  against  the  fixed 
and  static  elements  of  the  ecclesiastical  life.  In  preaching,  the 
minister  is  engaged  in  an  individual  action;  in  the  liturgy  he 
merely  leads  the  devotions  in  the  name  of  the  people.  In  the 
one  case  he  tries  to  bring  forth  the  new  as  well  as  the  old 
from  the  treasure-house  of  the  ideal  church;  in  the  other,  he 
is  content  to  commemorate  what  has  already  been  attained. 
In  the  former  function,  he  is  free  to  give  the  fullest  expres- 
sion to  his  own  personality,  consistently  with  the  limitations 
imposed  upon  him  by  the  common  faith  and  the  sanctities  that 
encompass  his  pulpit;  in  the  latter,  he  feels  himself  bound  by 
the  appointments  that  have  been  prescribed  for  him  by  external 
authority.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  therefore,  it  is  through  the 
free  homiletic  treatment  of  its  common  faith  by  the  pastor  that 
the  church  works  most  directly  upon  its  own  inner  life,  and 
receives  the  inspiration  and  leadership  that  it  needs  for  ag- 
gressive, eflicient  missionary  and  philanthropic  service  in  the 
community.  It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  Baur  defines 
homiletics  as  that  theological  discipline  that  deals  with  the 
essence  of  the  sermon  as  a  necessary  expression  of  the  church's 
life. 

In  the  course  of  the  last  five  or  six  decades,  however,  homi- 
letic theory,  following  as  usual  closely  upon  homiletic  prac- 
tice, has  made  most  advance  by  making  relatively  more  of  that 
third  factor  that  enters  into  the  idea  of  all  true  preaching, 
the  personality  of  the  preacher.  It  was  largely  because  Palmer, 
anticipating  even  Vinet  in  this,  again  conceived  the  sermon  as 
determined  on  the  one  hand  by  the  peculiarity  of  the  Chris- 
tian principle  itself,  and  on  the  other  by  the  individuality  of 
the  preacher,  that  his  manual  became  the  most  influential  of 
the  last  century.  The  common  treatises  had  offered  little  more 
than  abstract  rules  borrowed  from  books  of  logic  and  rhetoric ; 
and  these  were  either  so  general  in  character  that  the  gulf  be- 
tween theoretical  precept  and  practical  performance  was  quite 
impassible,  or  so  detailed  and  minute  that  they  imposed  in- 
tolerable fetters  upon  the  speaker.  To-day  the  conviction  is 
wide-spread  that  the  only  cure  for  dulness  and  inefficiency  in 


404        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

the  pulpit  is  not  more  brilliance  of  diction  or  polish  of  style 
but  a  larger  measure  of  moral  and  spiritual  reality  in  the 
preacher.  Preaching  of  late  may  indeed  have  become  poorer 
in  theological  learning,  but  as  a  whole  it  is  richer  in  religious 
and  ethical  earnestness.  The  sermon,  according  to  the  best 
homiletic  ideals,  is  more  what  Luther  said  it  ought  to  be, 
something  done  rather  than  something  merely  said.  It  is  not 
only  an  intellectual  but  also  an  emotional  and  a  volitional 
communication.  The  preacher  not  only  thinks  but  also  feels 
and  wills.  He  ^puts  his  personality  into  •an  act.  He  works 
energetically  through  words  to  reach  the  conscience  as  well 
as  to  inform  the  mind,  to  stir  the  feelings  as  well  as  to  engage 
the  understanding;  in  a  word,  to  kindle  all  the  faculties  that 
may  in  any  wise  aid  in  the  attainment  of  his  object,  the  moving 
of  the  hearer's  will.  He  desires,  in  his  own  measure  to  be- 
come "  a  prophet  mighty  in  deed  and  word  before  God  and  all 
the  people  ". 

True,  this  whole  modern  emphasis  upon  the  subjective 
rights  of  the  Christian  worker,  as  of  the  believer,  has  its 
dangers.  There  are  those  who  go  the  length  of  declaring  that 
the  preacher  must  say  nothing  that  transcends  the  reach  of 
his  own  experience,  lest  his  words  become  of  none  effect 
through  their  sheer  emptiness.  They  quite  forget  that  even 
the  apostles  were  more  concerned  to  give  us  the  Christ  of  their 
experience  than  their  experience  of  the  Christ,  and  that  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  many  of  the  teachings  of  the  Bible 
admit  of  no  experience  in  this  world.  Nevertheless,  as  Dr. 
Stalker  has  well  said :  "  What  an  audience  looks  for,  before 
everything  else,  in  the  texture  of  the  sermon  is  the  blood- 
streak  of  experience ;  and  truth  is  doubly  and  trebly  true  when 
it  comes  from  a  man  who  speaks  as  if  he  had  learned  it  by 
his  own  work  and  suffering."  ^  The  preacher  must,  after  his 
own  fashion,  be  a  reproduction  of  the  truth  in  a  personal  form. 
The  Word  must  become  incarnate  in  him.  If  the  orator  is 
born  and  not  made,  the  prophet  of  God  must  be  born  and 
re-bom.  And  just  in  proportion  as  the  truth  becomes  a  living 
reality  to  him  and  in  him,  does  his  message,  like  the  historic 

*  Stalker,  The  Preacher  and  his  Models,  p.  i66. 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        405 

revelation  of  God  that  grew  organically  into  the  perfect  gospel, 
assume  a  marvelous  multiformity  in  his  sermons.  Christ  never 
dwarfs,  he  always  heightens  and  enriches  the  individuality  of 
him  whom  he  indwells.  The  greatest  preachers  will  be  the 
most  original,  not  because  they  have  any  creative  power — 
that  is  a  divine  prerogative — but  because  being  most  receptive 
they  are  most  reproductive,  in  giving  forth  the  truth  and  grace 
and  life  which  they  have  themselves  received.  They  need  not, 
and  indeed  they  cannot,  preach  themselves ;  yet  will  their  per- 
sonalities dominate  their  messages  throughout.  After  all,  the 
greatest  problem  for  homiletics  is  not  the  making  of  the  ser- 
mon, but  the  making  of  the  preacher. 

From  one  quarter  only  has  the  independence,  not  to  say  the 
very  existence  of  homiletics  as  a  science  been  challenged.  It 
has  often  been  treated  as  a  mere  branch  of  rhetoric;  a  mis- 
fortune which  some  of  our  theological  seminaries  have  done 
their  part  to  perpetuate  in  their  chairs  of  so-called  '*  sacred 
rhetoric  ",  and  from  which  they  have  suffered  great  harm. 

The  relation  between  these  two  sciences  merits  a  much 
fuller  treatment  than  it  commonly  receives  in  our  English 
homiletic  manuals.  Indeed,  the  whole  history  of  our  disci- 
pline could  conveniently  and  most  instructively  be  written  from 
this  point  of  view.  Significant,  for  example,  is  the  fact  that 
the  father  of  modern  scientific  homiletics,  the  Reformed  pro- 
fessor of  Marburg,  Hyperius,  gave  his  epoch-making  treatise 
of  the  year  1553  the  sub-title,  De  interpretatione  scripturarum 
sacrarum  populari.  True  to  the  spirit  of  his  Church,  he 
conceived  the  sermon  as  essentially  an  exposition  of  the 
Bible,  whereas  the  Lutheran  practice,  confirmed  by  the  at- 
tempt of  Melanchthon  to  model  the  sermon  upon  Greek  classi- 
cal traditions,  gave  the  first  place  to  the  idea  of  oratory. 
Hyperius,  while  freely  acknowledging  the  necessity  of  rhetoric 
in  general,  and  its  great  value  for  preaching,  nevertheless  be- 
gan that  long  process  by  which  finally  homiletics  could  free 
itself  from  the  bondage  of  the  pagan  ideals.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, till  toward  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  that  the 
name  "  homiletics  "  was  coined,  having  been  first  used  by 
Gobel  in  the  title  of  his  manual  Methodologia  Homiletica 
(1672),  and  then  by  Baier  in  his  Compendium  Theologiae 


4o6        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

Homileticae  (1677),  and  Krumholz  in  his  Compendium  Homi- 
leticum  (1699).  The  new  name  betokened  a  further  emanci- 
pation from  rhetoric.  Nor  does  it  occasion  surprise  that  to 
this  day,  where  rationahstic  influences  are  predominant,  or 
where,  as  in  the  Romish  Church,  the  pulpit  is  made  subordi- 
nate, preaching  is  still  spoken  of  merely  as  "  ecclesiastical  elo- 
quence ",  **  the  eloquence  of  the  clerical  profession  ",  or  "  pul- 
pit eloquence  ".  Even  Vinet,  brilliant  as  his  work  is  in  its 
philosophic  penetration,  was  too  strongly  influenced  by 
Schott's  devotion  to  the  ancient  rhetoric-  Phelps,  Broadus, 
Shedd,  and  Hoppin  begin  with  Vinet's  dictum:  "Rhetoric 
is  the  genus,  homiletics  is  the  species."  But  following  the  im- 
pulse given  by  Schleiermacher,  such  writers  as  Palmer,  Stier, 
Baur,  Gaupp,  Harnack,  Kleinert,  van  Oosterzee,  Schweizer 
and  Christlieb  have  vindicated  for  homiletics  an  independent 
place  in  the  circle  of  the  sciences. 

The  solution  of  this  much  discussed  problem  is  possible  only 
upon  a  philosophic  basis.  For  historically  every  conceivable 
position  has  been  taken,  from  the  one  extreme  of  a  perfect 
identification  of  the  sciences  to  the  other  extreme  of  an  abso- 
lute mutual  exclusiveness.  At  the  outset,  it  is  plain  that  the 
term  rhetoric  has  been  used  in  two  different  senses;  the  one 
presenting  only  the  formal,  the  other  dealing  also  with  the 
substantial  or  ethical  considerations  involved  in  discourse. 
The  former  was  exceedingly  common  among  the  ancients. 
Rhetoric  was  often  treated  as  the  mere  knowledge  of  means, 
natural  or  artificial,  worthy  or  unworthy,  by  which  an  orator, 
quite  regardless  of  his  subject,  could  win  the  good  will  of  his 
hearers.  This  was  the  conception  of  the  Sophists,  which  was 
so  severely  condemned  by  Plato  as  a  mere  art  of  shamming, 
and  later  by  Kant,  who  described  it  as  an  art  "  which  utilizes 
the  weakness  of  men  for  its  own  purposes  "  and  "  deceives 
by  means  of  a  fair  show  ".  But  even  in  the  earliest  classical 
rhetoric  the  more  serious  and  elevated  conception  of  public 
speaking,  as  an  ethical  transaction,  was  emphasized.  Stress 
was  laid  upon  the  content  of  the  discourse  and  uf>on  the  per- 
sonality of  the  speaker.  It  was  maintained  that  true  eloquence 
was  based  upon  the  self -evidencing  and  convincing  power  of 
the  truth,  when  rightly  unveiled,  and  upon  the  character  of 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        407 

the  orator  as  a  man  worthy  of  confidence  in  the  double  sense 
of  his  being  a  master  of  his  subject  and  a  sincere  and  veracious 
exponent  of  it.  Here,  then,  we  have  a  conception  of  rhetoric 
that  begins  to  level  up  to  the  heights  of  homiletic  theory  as 
we  have  sought  to  unfold  it  from  the  New  Testament  itself. 
That  the  two  sciences  may  have  much  in  common  is  at  once 
apparent.  Eloquence  in  the  pulpit  or  out  of  it  becomes  pri- 
marily a  moral  virtue.  And  in  regard  to  the  formal  structure 
of  discourse  and  many  stylistic  peculiarities,  it  is  evident  that 
there  can  be  only  one  set  of  principles  by  which  to  arrange  the 
matter  of  an  address  in  an  orderly,  attractive  and  persuasive 
way.  From  this  point  of  view  there  cannot  be  two  rhetorics : 
there  can  be  only  a  sacred  or  a  secular  use  of  the  same  rhetoric 
cal  principles. 

Nevertheless,  the  elements  of  difference  between  the  two 
sciences  are  more  important  than  those  which  they  necessarily 
have  in  common,  even  after  the  utmost  concessions  have  been 
made  in  favor  of  the  higher  ethical  conception  of  discourse 
which  the  heathen  rhetoric  at  its  best  developed.  As  we  have 
seen,  the  sermon  deals  with  the  gospel;  it  has  a  distinctively 
religious  aim,  one  which  transcends  the  merely  human  sphere ; 
and  it  depends  for  success  primarily  upon  spiritual  methods. 
In  these  three  principles  is  grounded  the  distinction  between 
homiletics  and  rhetoric,  a  distinction  that  is  essential  though 
it  is  not  absolute.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  rhetoric  in  laying 
down  rules  suitable  for  all  possible  discourses,  the  sermon  in- 
cluded, can  serve  only  a  formal  purpose.  As  Christlieb  has 
well  said :  "  It  is  only  if,  instead  of  finding  the  subject  of 
Christian  preaching  in  Christ  and  His  salvation,  we  find  it  in 
the  general  ideas  of  duty,  virtue,  and  happiness  .... 
which  also  ultimately  formed  the  chief  subjects  of  the  best 
heathen  rhetoric,  that  the  distinction  in  scope  and  aim  between 
the  two  sciences,  and  therefore  any  difference  at  all  between 
them,  vanishes."  *  If,  according  to  the  ethical  idea  of  public 
address,  the  very  form  becomes  inseparable  from  the  subject- 
matter,  how  can  maxims  that  may  have  fitted  the  Greek  stage 
or  the  Roman  forum  suit  the  facts  in  that  field  of  discourse  in 

*  Christlieb,  Homiletics,  p.  17. 


4o8        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

which  by  common  consent  the  subject-matter,  the  aim,  and  the 
method  of  the  address  are  unique?  Only  when  we  define 
rhetoric  in  such  general  terms  as  to  embrace  all  expression  of 
thought  in  language,  without  any  distinction  as  to  the  matter 
and  the  form,  can  the  independence  of  homiletics  as  a  science 
be  questioned;  but  such  a  conception  of  rhetoric  would  like- 
wise leave  room  for  no  other  science  whatsoever. 

As  a  mere  matter  of  fact,  homiletics  has  only  then  flourished 
when  it  has  been  cultivated  in  its  own  congenial  soil,  the  field 
of  the  theologicc^l  sciences.  Indeed,  the  influence  of  rhetoric, 
in  more  than  one  period  of  the  pulpit's  history,  has  been  bane- 
ful in  the  extreme.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the 
preacher  is  not  the  successor  of  the  Greek  orator  but  of  the 
Hebrew  prophet.  In  religious  and  spiritual  matters,  the  hearer 
is  not  convinced  by  human  art  but  by  the  demonstration  and 
power  of  the  Holy  Spirit.    Unction  is  more  than  diction. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  homilete,  having  put  first  things 
first,  dares  to  appropriate  for  his  professional  labor,  as  for 
his  personal  religious  needs,  Paul's  assurance,  "  All  things 
are  yours."  In  particular  as  regards  rhetoric,  he  will  act  upon 
Herder's  precept :  "  First  till  our  field  as  if  there  were  no 
ancients;  then  use  the  art  of  the  ancients,  not  in  order  to 
build  our  own  anew,  but  to  improve  and  perfect  it."  Only 
let  homiletics,  true  to  its  best  developments  in  the  past,  grow 
out  of  its  own  independent  root,  and  all  the  other  theological 
sciences  and  the  church  they  serve  will  have  reason  to  rejoice 
in  the  goodly  fruitage  of  this  tree. 

Such,  then,  is  the  task  of  homiletics  as  the  science  of  preach- 
ing; and  such  are  the  principles  that  secure  for  this  branch 
of  theoretical  knowledge  a  place  of  honorable  independence  in 
the  circle  of  the  sciences. 

But,  as  we  have  already  said,  homiletics  must  be  something 
more  than  a  science.  It  belongs  to  the  practical  theological 
disciplines,  all  of  which  have  this  as  their  distinctive  function,, 
that  besides  giving  the  minister  of  the  gospel  the  true  concep- 
tion of  his  work  they  aid  him  by  practical  counsels  to  perform 
that  work  in  the  most  effective  way.  Homiletics,  then,  must 
itself  reduce  its  scientific  principles  to  a  technique.  It  cannot 
rest  content  with  its  conclusions  in  the  domain  of  pure  knowl- 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        409 

edge.  It  has  a  further  duty  than  the  development  of  the  mere 
idea  of  the  sermon.  It  must  show  how  this  idea  may  best  be 
reaHzed.    The  science  must  resolve  itself  into  an  art. 

But  at  the  very  threshold  of  this  task,  homiletics  is  con- 
fronted by  the  allegation  that  preaching  cannot  be  taught  as 
an  art,  and  that,  even  were  this  possible,  it  would  not  be  desira- 
ble. Thus  even  so  great  a  preacher  and  so  noble  an  expositor 
of  preaching  as  Phillips  Brooks  declares  that  ''  the  definite  and 
immediate  purpose  which  a  sermon  has  set  before  it  makes  it 
impossible  to  consider  it  as  a  work  of  art,  and  every  attempt 
to  consider  it  so  works  injury  to  the  purpose  for  which  the 
sermon  was  created ".  ^  And  he  continues :  the  sermon 
'*  knows  no  essential  and  eternal  type,  but  its  law  for  what  it 
ought  to  be  comes  from  the  needs  and  fickle  changes  of  the 
men  for  whom  it  lives.  Now  this  is  thoroughly  inartistic.  Art 
contemplates  the  absolute  beauty.  The  simple  work  of  art  is 
the  pure  utterance  of  beautiful  thought  in  beautiful  form  with- 
out further  purpose  than  simply  that  it  should  be  uttered 
.  .  .  Art  knows  nothing  of  the  tumultuous  eagerness  of 
earnest  purpose."  There  is  some  truth  in  this  characteriza- 
tion of  art;  and  Brooks  is  justified  in  speaking  as  he  does 
against  the  vice  of  "  sermonizing  ".  But  he  is  using  the  word 
''  art  "  in  an  extremely  limited  sense ;  and  even  then  it  may 
fairly  be  questioned  whether,  for  example,  the  world's  great 
poems  could  properly  be  embraced  in  this  sweeping  verdict. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  the  fact  remains  that,  so  far  as  preaching  is 
concerned,  art,  considered  in  the  first  instance  as  the  use  of  ap- 
propriate means  to  gain  chosen  ends,  is  absolutely  indispensa- 
ble. Art  thus  understood  need  have  nothing  to  do  with  mere 
artifice  or  artificiality.  It  is  the  deliberate,  reasoned  use  of 
suitable  means.  But  even  in  the  more  ideal  sense  of  the  term, 
does  not  the  very  glory  of  the  preacher's  work  lie  in  his  ca- 
pacity to  express  "  beautiful  thought  in  beautiful  form  ",  and 
does  not  such  utterance  inevitably  give  a  certain  expansion  and 
delight,  as  well  as  moral  impulse,  to  the  mind  of  the  hearer? 
Indeed,  is  there  any  art  in  which  the  ideal  and  the  practical  are 
so  harmoniously  blended?     The  best  answer  to  Brooks   is 

''  Brooks,  Lectures  on  Preaching,  p.  109. 


410 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 


Brooks  himself — the  grace  and  skill  of  his  sermonic  art.  Far 
truer  is  the  remark  of  Vinet :  "  What,  in  truth,  is  art  but 
nature  still?  Art,  from  the  first  moment  is  present  in  every 
creation;  if,  then,  you  would  exclude  art,  where  will  you 
begin  the  exclusion?  You  see  at  once  that  you  can  never 
ascend  high  enough.  What  we  call  nature,  or  talent,  is,  un- 
consciously to  itself,  only  a  more  consummate,  more  spon- 
taneous art.  What  we  call  art  is  but  prolonged  or  perfected 
instinct,  which  in  all  cases  is  only  a  more  elementary  and 
more  rapid  process  of  reasoning.  If  instinct  removes  the  first 
difficulties  that  present  themselves,  will  it  also  remove  the 
next?  That  is  the  question.  And  it  presents  itself  again 
under  another  form.  Does  looking  hinder  us  from  seeing? 
Does  not  looking  aid  us  in  seeing?  "^  We  may  add  that  as  a 
matter  of  history,  the  most  gifted  preachers,  like  the  greatest 
poets,  have  cultivated  their  art  with  laborious  assiduity. 

Then  again,  there  have  not  been  wanting  those  who  have 
condemned  homiletic  art  on  what  they  conceive  to  be  the  lofty 
grounds  of  religion.  They  are  fond  of  quoting  such  texts  as 
this :  *'  But  when  they  deliver  you  up,  be  not  anxious  how 
or  what  ye  shall  speak;  for  it  shall  be  given  you  in  that  hour 
what  ye  shall  speak."  But  dare  any  one  apply  this  promise 
of  extraordinary  help  made  to  the  apostles  for  an  extraordi- 
nary need  to  the  case  of  a  pastor  drawing  his  salary  in  regular 
installments  from  a  congregation  he  has  vowed  to  serve  with 
the  best  use  of  all  his  talents?  Just  as  far-fetched  is  the  exe- 
gesis that  invokes  Paul's  statements  about  "  wisdom  of  words" 
and  the  "  philosophy  "  of  some  Greeks  at  Colossae  as  an  ex- 
cuse for  the  systematic  neglect  of  the  study  of  Hebrew  or 
dogmatic  theology.  Nor  is  it  safe  for  any  young  minister  on 
purely  a  priori  grounds  to  number  himself  among  those  ex- 
ceptional servants  of  God  with  whom  art  has  all  the  spontaneity 
of  instinct  in  a  genius.  For  nothing  is  more  fatal  to  talent 
than  to  mistake  itself  for  genius.  Meanwhile,  the  rank  and 
file  of  our  preachers  must  remember  that  God  helps  them  who 
help  themselves  through  the  best  use  of  the  gifts  he  has 
given  them.     Here,  too,  the  saying  applies  in  all  its  scope: 

'Vinet,  Homiletics,  p.  33- 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        411 

**  If  a  man  strive,  yet  is  he  not  crowned  except  he  strive  law- 
fully." 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  it  behooves  alike  the  student 
and  the  teacher  of  any  practical  art  to  cherish  a  sober  estimate 
of  what  may  be  accomplished.  No  homiletic  training  can 
ever  be  a  substitute  for  native  endowment.  It  can  give  no 
new  powers  of  speech.  It  may  do  much  to  kindle  and  in- 
tensify, but  it  can  never  impart,  the  divine  spark  of  true 
eloquence.  It  can  furnish  correct  principles  and  helpful  pre- 
cepts; but  the  application  of  these  is  always  a  personal  mat- 
ter for  the  student  himself.  As  Phelps  tersely  puts  it:  "In 
brief,  it  can  make  the  business  practicable,  but  it  can  never 
create  the  doing  of  it.  A  man  must  work  the  theory  into  his 
own  culture,  so  that  he  shall  execute  it  unconsciously.  This 
he  can  do  only  by  his  own  experience  of  the  theory  in  his  own 
practice  till  it  becomes  a  second  nature." 

With  this  conception  of  homiletics  as  a  theological  art,  how 
can  the  discipline  best  be  taught  under  the  concrete  conditions 
under  which  the  work  must  be  done  in  our  theological  semi- 
naries?   This,  then,  is  the  remaining  question  before  us. 

In  attempting  a  solution  of  this  problem,  I  have  tried  to  do 
full  justice  to  the  two  principles  which,  I  take  it,  are  funda- 
mental in  this  task:  that  the  distinctive  trait  of  all  art  is  its 
synthetic  quality,  and  that  efficiency  in  the  exercise  of  any 
practical  art  depends  upon  the  thoroughness  with  which  its 
theories  are  converted  into  an  adequate  technique. 

I  have  time  only  to  indicate  in  a  general  way  the  method  by 
which  I  hope  to  give  effect  to  these  two  principles  in  my 
conduct  of  the  work  in  homiletics.  I  must  be  brief,  for  I  am 
well  aware  that  at  this  late  hour  there  is  nothing,  among  the 
many  things  that  may  be  said  of  homiletic  or  of  any  other 
art,  that  is  more  to  the  point  than  Longfellow's  line,  *'  Art  is 
long,  and  time  is  fleeting". 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  the  instruction  must  be  vitally  and 
constantly  related  to  all  the  elements  which  in  their  combination 
make  the  sermon.  Preaching  as  an  art  is  the  harmonious 
synthesis  of  the  three  factors  which  the  science  of  homiletics 
has  taught  us  enter  into  the  very  idea  of  preaching;  the  subject, 
the  congregation,  and  the  speaker,  or  the  content  of  the  mes- 


412 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 


sage,  its  adaptation  to  the  hearer  and  the  personality  of  the 
preacher. 

As  regards  the  first,  the  subject-matter  of  preaching,  homi- 
letics  can  render  an  invaluable  service  to  the  theological  stu- 
dent by  relating  all  his  work  in  the  seminary  to  the  needs  of 
the  pulpit.  Some  one  has  said  that  every  university  ought  in 
these  days  to  have  a  professorship  of  things  in  general,  be- 
cause owing  to  the  extreme  specialization  of  the  sciences 
many  a  man  after  four  years  of  college  work  is  sadly  puzzled 
in  trying  to  organize  his  intellectual  world  into  an  orderly, 
unified  system.  And  this  difficulty  is  likely  to  be  increased, 
rather  than  diminished,  when  the  student  enters  upon  his  semi- 
nary course.  Certain  it  is  that  he  frequently  has  no  proper 
notion  of  the  relations  which  his  highly  diversified  studies  bear 
to  one  another  and  to  the  work  of  the  ministry.  He  not  seldom 
comes  to  the  close  of  the  day's  exercises  feeling  that  what  he 
has  heard  in  the  several  class-rooms  may  fill  note-books  with 
a  variegated  lore,  but  not  satisfy  the  mind  of  a  prospective 
homilete  or  the  heart  of  a  would-be  pastor.  He  begins  to 
think  that  he  is  in  real  danger  of  being  over-educated,  and 
that  he  can  become  more  efficient  as  a  minister  of  the  gospel, 
if  he  will  not  burden  himself  with  any  excess  of  scientific 
knowledge. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  difficult  problem  to  bridge  this  gulf  for  the 
student.  But  I  am  convinced  that  more  can  be  done  by  the 
practical  chairs  than  commonly  is  attempted  in  our  American 
institutions  of  sacred  learning.  The  method  employed  in 
some  of  the  Scotch  seminaries  is  highly  to  be  commended. 
The  professors  in  the  practical  department  devote  a  substan- 
tial part  of  their  courses  to  this  specific  task  of  showing  how 
the  whole  body  of  instruction  bears  on  the  equipment  of  the 
preacher  and  pastor.  And  I  do  not  know  of  a  more  useful 
service  that  I  ought  to  try  to  render  than  to  pass  in  review 
the  courses  of  our  curriculum  in  order  to  emphasize  not  only 
the  practical  character  of  their  results  but  also  the  homiletic 
benefits  of  the  peculiar  discipline  imparted  in  each  case. 

But  there  is  still  another  and  more  practical  expedient.  I 
refer  to  that  used  in  the  homiletic  seminars  of  the  German 
universities,  a  method  for  the  introduction  of  which  into  this 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        413 

Seminary  the  marked  development  and  popularity  of  our 
extra-curriculum  classes  paves  the  way.  With  smaller  groups 
of  students  thus  banded  together  the  problem  can  be  quite 
satisfactorily  solved  by  having  the  scientific  and  the  practical 
work  done  under  the  guidance  of  the  same  professor.  Of 
course,  his  limitations  are  here  the  serious  concern.  He  can  in 
no  sense  vie  with  the  specialists  in  their  particular  fields.  But 
if  he  is  not  utterly  disqualified  for  his  position,  he  can,  at  least 
in  some  of  the  departments,  be  both  scientific  and  practical 
in  his  methods,  and  that,  after  all,  is  here  the  main  consider- 
ation. At  any  rate,  he  can  encourage  the  students  to  use  in 
their  own  independent  work  in  such  classes  the  most  thorough 
scientific  methods  they  have  learned  in  the  prosecution  of  the 
theoretical  disciplines,  in  order  that  under  his  guidance  they 
may  then  utilize  their  results  in  the  actual  production  of  apolo- 
getic, expository,  doctrinal,  ethical,  sociological,  or  historical 
sermons.  To  what  extent  the  scientific  end  of  such  work  may 
be  emphasized  it  scarcely  becomes  me  to  intimate.  But  I 
may  be  pardoned  for  adding  that  I  certainly  should  never 
have  accepted  the  invitation  to  this  chair,  had  I  not  felt  con- 
vinced that  one  of  its  richest  opportunities  lies  in  the  possi- 
bility it  offers  in  such  classes  for  combining,  at  first  hand, 
scholarly  work  in  favorite  departments  with  practical  exer- 
cises in  the  formal  statement  of  results  for  the  pulpit. 

And  there  is  still  a  third  way  by  which  a  professor  of  homi- 
letics  can  show  the  students  the  practical  significance  of  the 
other  work  done  in  the  curriculum.  The  sermons  submitted  in 
writing  or  delivered  by  them  may  be  made  the  basis  for  this 
instruction.  Now  and  then,  for  instance,  a  man  will  need  to 
be  told  with  great  plainness  that  if  the  pulpit  is  his  objective 
point,  then  for  him  the  course  in  voice  culture  is  the  most  im- 
portant of  all.  Another,  perchance,  must  learn  how  to  bring 
his  dogmatic  and  ethical  wings  together  for  a  truly  homiletic 
flight;  preaching  his  doctrines  with  ethical  applications  in 
view  and  his  ethics  in  their  doctrinal  origins.  Still  a  third 
may  need  the  reminder  that  he  is  supposed  to  preach  only 
the  whole  counsel  of  God,  not  also  all  the  results  of  the  latest 
scholarship  on  some  point  of  merely  antiquarian  interest,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  latest  guesses  of  some  rationalistic  critic 


414 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 


who  in  any  event  wK)uld  not  leave  the  pastor  a  preachable 
Bible.  And  here,  no  less  than  in  the  constructive  part  of  the 
course,  there  need  not  fail  the  word  of  guidance  that  shall 
make  the  cross  of  Christ  borrow  radiance  from  every  page  of 
text-book  and  from  every  course  of  study  in  the  school  of 
sacred  learning. 

But  homiletic  art,  as  we  have  intimated,  demands  a  still 
richer  synthesis.  There  is  a  second  factor  that  enters  into 
the  construction  of  every  truly  successful  sermon,. — its  adapta- 
tion to  the  hearer.  Indeed,  this  is  a  consideration  of  scarcely 
less  importance  than  the  subject-matter  itsdf.  And  yet  many 
a  preacher  fails  at  this  very  point.  As  a  student  in  the  semi- 
nary he  may  even  have  distinguished  himself  by  his  scholarly 
attainments ;  but  as  a  pastor  trying  to  minister  to  a  particular 
congregation  he  at  once  shows  that  he  is  hopelessly  out  of 
touch  with  the  concrete  environment  in  which  he  finds  himself. 
More  pathetic  still  are  the  chapters  that  sometimes  follow  this 
mournful  introduction  to  the  story  of  his  professional  life: 
the  older  he  grows  the  more  obvious  is  his  aloofness  from  the 
age  of  which  he  is  supposed  to  be  a  part.  He  simply  does  not 
understand  the  great  law  of  adaptation  by  which  the  sermonic 
material  is  made  not  only  intelligible  but  also  interesting,  at- 
tractive and  impressive.  With  all  his  learning  he  is  the  vic- 
tim of  a  defective  culture,  in  consequence  of  which  he  may  have 
to  labor  under  a  contracted  usefulness  to  the  end  of  his  days. 

What,  then,  can  a  professor  of  homiletics  do  to  prevent  or 
to  remedy  such  an  evil?  In  general  it  may  be  said,  he  can 
give  both  inspiration  and  practical  guidance  for  the  attain- 
ment of  the  more  adequate  culture  that  is  needed.  He  can 
project  the  scope  of  his  task  beyond  the  narrow  confines  of 
the  student's  academic  years  and  emphasize  the  principles  by 
which  alone  the  pastor  can  secure  and  maintain  a  high  intel- 
lectual efficiency  in  the  pulpit. 

For  one  thing,  he  can  expedite  the  experience  of  the  future 
preacher  by  helping  him  in  advance  to  understand  the  signs 
of  the  times  in  which  his  ministry  will  lie.  Here,  I  take  it, 
is  the  secret  of  that  deep  and  wide  influence  which  the  "  Lyman 
Beecher  Lectureship  on  Preaching  "  at  Yale  University  has 
exerted.    The  incumbents  have  been  men  of  distinguished  use- 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        415 

fulness  in  the  active  pastorate,  and  as  such  they  have  com- 
monly dealt,  not  v^^ith  the  details  of  homiletic  technique,  but 
with  the  large  questions  that  pertain  to  ministerial  efficiency 
in  the  modern  world.  As  Dr.  James  Stalker,  one  of  the 
most  helpful  of  these  Lecturers,  said  to  the  students,  "  there 
is  room  amidst  your  studies,  and  without  the  slightest  dis- 
paragement to  them,  for  a  message  more  directly  from  life, 
to  hint  to  you,  that  more  may  be  needed  in  the  career  to 
which  you  are  looking  forward  than  a  college  can  give,  and 
that  the  powers  on  which  success  in  practical  life  depends 
may  be  somewhat  different  from  those  which  avail  most  at 
your  present  stage  ".'''  And  throughout  his  lectures  he,  like 
most  of  his  predecessors  and  successors  on  that  foundation, 
lays  great  stress  upon  the  point  I  am  now  emphasizing,  the 
necessity  of  a  thorough  understanding  of  the  peculiar  and 
distinctive  features  of  our  age.  And  as  I  conceive  the  work 
of  this  chair,  one  of  its  most  useful  services  is  that  of  aid- 
ing young  men  to  a  secure  homiletic  platform  as  they  stand 
with  the  ancient  gospel  on  their  lips  before  the  marvelous 
complexities  and  difficulties  of  our  modern  life.  No  young 
man  ought  to  be  left  altogether  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
his  own  experience  in  grappling,  as  many  a  one  must  do 
with  the  very  instinct  of  intellectual  self-preservation,  with 
the  problem  of  interpreting  the  conditions  under  which  he 
will  have  to  exercise  his  ministry.  He  ought  to  be  told  in 
advance  something  about  the  absorbing  interest  of  this  gen- 
eration in  its  material  welfare  and  of  the  influence  that  this 
is  likely  to  exert  upon  the  content  and  form  of  his  message. 
He  must  know  the  significance  of  the  inductive  process  of  in- 
vestigation as  employed  in  the  natural  sciences,  and  the  bear- 
ings of  this  fact  upon  men's  conceptions  of  the  Supernatural  in 
history.  He  must  realize  what  changes  psychology  has 
wrought  in  the  valuation  of  many  religious  phenomena,  as 
well  as  in  the  province  of  pedagogical  and  therefore  also  of 
homiletic  methods.  He  must  understand  the  shifting  of  the 
centre  of  gravity  in  our  ecclesiastical  life  from  narrow  parti- 
san polemics  to  the  broader  statesmanship  found,  for  example, 

'   Stalk€r,  The  Preacher  and  His  Models^  p.  5. 


4i6        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

in  the  aggressive  leadership  of  our  denominational  Boards  for 
haniionious  and  effective  cooi>eration  in  spiritual  and  philan- 
thropic labors  at  home  and  abroad.  He  must  know  the  mean- 
ing of  the  profound  social  unrest  of  these  days,  and  of  the 
insistent  and  universal  demand  that  our  ministers  shall  give 
intelligent  and  courageous  direction  to  the  work  of  mak- 
ing social  applications  of  the  principles  of  the  gospel.  And 
in  this  connection  he  may  need  the  reminder  that  our  Biblical 
commentaries  have  too  often  been  written  by  scholarly  re- 
cluses who  may  have  tried  hard  enough  to  see  the  social  mes- 
sage of  Christianity  in  the  right  perspective,  but  who  have 
failed  because  they  have  lacked  the  sympathy,  the  insight,  the 
wisdom  begotten  of  a  personal  experience  of  the  world's  need 
of  such  a  message.  In  fine,  the  student  must  be  encouraged 
and  fitted  to  live  the  homiletic  life  of  the  twentieth  century, 
lest  the  church,  as  well  as  the  Christian  agencies  outside  of 
the  church,  pass  him  by  to  take  up  the  legitimate  order  of 
the  day.  He  cannot  possibly  have  too  much  scholarship,  but 
at  every  cost  he  must  learn  to  focus  his  scholarship  upon  the 
real  issues  of  life  and  make  his  knowledge  fruitful  of  good. 
He  must  understand  the  age,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  to  be 
able  to  talk  to  it  in  the  intelligible  forms  of  a  living  faith.  He 
must  put  upon  the  pure  gold  of  his  gosi>el  a  stamp  and  super- 
scription that  will  make  his  homiletic  coinage  current  through- 
out the  whole  realm  of  his  ministerial  influence. 

And  here  the  beneficent  ministry  of  general  literature  may 
well  be  invoked  to  aid  the  future  preacher  in  his  necessary 
self-cultivation.  It  is  by  no  means  an  accident  that  the  three 
most  gifted  and  influential  teachers  of  homiletics  whom  this 
country  has  produced,  Dr.  Broadus,  Dr.  Shedd  and  Dr.  Phelps, 
have  written  so  extensively  and  so  forcibly  upon  this  subject 
of  the  importance  to  the  pastor  of  a  growing  knowledge  of  the 
world's  best  literature.  These  writers  have  not  deemed  it 
beneath  their  dignity  to  show  how  even  in  these  days  of 
intellectual  scraps  and  mental  dissipation  through  ephemeral 
reading,  it  is  possible  for  one  who  would  resolutely  go  upon 
the  nobler  errands  of  the  mind,  to  secure  a  choice  culture 
through  converse  with  the  sceptred  immortals  in  the  literary 
history  of  the  race.     To  inspire  men  who  are  rightly  to  re- 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        417 

gard  themselves  as  the  servants  of  one  Book  to  become  never- 
theless the  masters  of  many  other  books  that  are  worthy  of 
a  life-long  study,  is  about  as  useful  a  service  as  a  seminary 
professor  can  render.  Nothing  is  more  practical  or  valuable 
than  the  giving  to  a  fellow-man  of  a  higher  ideal  by  which 
he  may  come  into  the  fuller  possession  of  himself.  And  in 
the  department  of  homiletics  this  is  the  truly  apostolic  way  of 
overcoming  evil  with  good  in  the  case  of  those  who  are  tempted 
to  use  the  meretricious  hints  and  helps,  the  elaborate  cabinets 
of  sermonic  skeletons  and  the  well  indexed  collections  of 
ready-made  illustrations  and  quotations  which  avarice  is.  so 
quick  to  place  into  the  hands  of  ignorance  and  indolence. 

But  the  most  subtle  element  of  the  three  which  in  their  syn- 
thesis make  the  sermon  is  the  personality  of  the  preacher.  It 
has  well  been  said :  "  The  effect  of  a  sermon  depends,  first 
of  all,  on  what  is  said,  and  next,  on  how  it  is  said ;  but  hardly 
less,  on  who  says  it."  And  if  we  are  justified  in  regarding 
the  spokesman  of  God  as  a  personal  witness  to  the  truth  he 
proclaims,  and  in  making  goodness,  therefore,  a  prime  qualifi- 
cation for  the  ministry  of  the  gospel,  then  our  seminaries  must 
ever  be  schools  in  which  men  will  grow  in  the  grace  as  well  as 
in  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord.  For  homiletics,  accordingly, 
the  fundamental  problem  is  the  problem  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  minister.  He  must  not  only  know  about  Christ,  he 
must  know  Christ ;  nay,  he  must  have  Christ  and  Christ  must 
have  him. 

Now,  of  course,  all  teachers  in  a  seminary  have  this  burden 
of  responsibility  resting  upon  their  hearts  and  consciences. 
They  are  all,  first  of  all,  ministers  of  grace  to  those  whom  they 
instruct.  They  are  all  concerned  with  this  task  of  making  the 
student,  like  that  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved,  a  true  divine. 
But  here,  too,  the  teacher  of  homiletics  has  a  special  duty  and 
a  unique  privilege.  Not  only  is  he  led  by  the  very  nature  of 
his  course  to  speak  heart-searching  words  on  such  subjects  as 
the  call  to  the  ministry,  the  personal  requisites  for  the  office, 
and  the  conditions  for  the  realization  of  spiritual  power  in 
preaching.  But  before  him  and  in  the  presence  of  their 
classmates  the  students,  many  of  them  for  the  first  time  in 
their  lives,  give  expression  in  public  to  their  most  sacred  re- 


4i8        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

ligious  convictions,  and  in  this  atmosphere  of  prayer  and 
devout  meditation  a  personal  word  from  the  professor  will 
often  mean  more  than  lengthy  general  counsels,  however  ap- 
propriate, given  under  less  favorable  circumstances  to  a  whole 
class  or  the  entire  student  body.  By  as  much  as  these  mat- 
ters are  more  intimately  related  to  the  personality  of  the 
man,  by  so  much  the  more  readily  may  the  class-room  in 
homiletics  become,  next  to  the  stated  services  of  the  sanctuary, 
the  assembly-place  for  the  focusing  upon  the  hearts  and 
minds  of  the  prospective  preachers  the  constraining  and  sanc- 
tifying power  of  the  motives  which  they  have  themselves 
avowed  in  seeking  the  gospel  ministry.  Nor  ought  these  ser- 
vices to  fail  to  do  their  part  in  bringing  the  highest  principles 
of  duty  to  bear  upon  the  daily  routine  of  study.  Moreover, 
as  in  dealing  with  the  question  of  the  minister's  future  intel- 
lectual life  many  helpful  counsels  may  be  given,  so  in  con- 
nection with  this  problem  of  his  spiritual  development  after 
his  entrance  upon  his  profession,  much  can  and  should  be 
done  in  the  way  of  making  practical  suggestions  as  to  books  of 
devotion,  habits  of  reading  and  meditation,  methods  of  work, 
and  the  best  ways  of  cultivating  personal  piety  amid  the  en- 
grossing duties  of  the  pastoral  office. 

Such,  then,  in  broad  outline,  is  my  conception  of  the  way 
in  which  the  synthetic  nature  of  homiletics  as  a  theological 
art  may  be  most  advantageously  realized.  But  this,  as  we 
have  remarked,  is  only  one  half  of  the  task.  The  second  of 
the  two  questions  remains.  How  can  this  art  be  most  effec- 
tively taught  as  a  technique? 

Measured  by  the  amount  of  time  it  will  require,  this  part 
of  the  work  in  homiletics  is,  of  course,  the  most  important. 
But  concerned  as  we  now  are  solely  with  the  method  of  in- 
struction, we  may  dispose  of  this  problem  with  a  few  brief 
remarks. 

In  the  first  place,  the  whole  mass  of  homiletic  theory  must 
constantly  be  related  to  the  final  purpose  which  this  discipline 
has  in  view,  the  securing  of  an  adequate  technique.  All  the 
instruction  must  be  practical.  The  lectures  or  the  text-books 
used  must  abound  in  concrete  examples  and  illustrations. 
Much  will  have  to  be  said  that  will  be  speedily  outgrown  in 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        419 

the  experience  of  the  preacher,  but  which  may  serve  a  most 
useful  purpose  in  moulding  his  tastes  and  fashioning  his  ser- 
monic  methods  for  the  future.  The  directions  and  counsels 
must  always  be  sufficiently  minute  and  detailed  to  be  really 
practicable,  while  on  the  other  hand  those  rules  will  be  most 
serviceable  which  are  presented  as  the  results  of  sound  basal 
principles.  Here,  as  in  the  teaching  of  every  art,  the  best 
guidance  is  that  which  helps  the  beginner  to  help  himself  and 
thus  outgrow  his  need  of  a  teacher. 

Again,  training  in  sermonic  technique  may  be  conveniently 
given  upon  the  basis  of  an  inductive  study  of  worthy  repre- 
sentatives of  the  homiletic  art.  In  this  connection  I  cannot 
forbear  alluding  to  the  provision  which  the  governing  Boards 
of  the  Seminary  have  in  their  wisdom  made  for  the  benefit 
of  our  students  by  securing  for  them  the  opportunity  of  mak- 
ing a  limited  number  of  visits  to  some  of  our  great  metro- 
politan churches.  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  believe  that  the 
chief  desideratum  for  the  theological  student  of  to-day  is 
that  he  shall  spend  a  considerable  fraction  of  the  brief  aca- 
demic year  in  so-called  practical  work,  whether  it  be  in  the 
neighborhood  of  his  seminary,  or  in  the  slums  or  the  mission 
Sunday  Schools  or  the  highly  organized  parish  activities  in 
our  great  cities.  But  having  during  the  past  year  received  the 
written  and  oral  reports  of  the  students  who  availed  them- 
selves of  this  privilege  of  hearing  some  of  our  ablest  preachers 
of  the  gospel,  I  cannot  but  express  my  opinion  that  this  policy, 
under  the  restrictions  that  have  been  imposed  by  the  Faculty, 
is  amply  justified  by  its  results.  To  the  best  of  my  knowledge 
and  judgment,  it  is  a  distinct  aid  to  the  work  of  the  entire 
practical  department;  an  aid,  too,  which  the  student  may  se- 
cure without  entailing  a  disproportionate  cost  in  time  or 
strength. 

But  I  would  here  particularly  emphasize  the  critical  study 
of  the  published  sermons  of  the  acknowledged  masters  of 
the  homiletic  art.  This  is  a  method  that  merits  a  much  more 
thorough  application  than  is  commonly  made  either  by  the 
student  or  the  minister  himself.  True,  an  adequate  history  of 
preaching  is  still  to  be  written;  but  special  periods  have  been 
fairly  well  treated  in  our  own  as  in  other  tongues.     At  any 


420        HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 

rate,  the  material  itself  in  our  English  and  American  literature 
is  exceptionally  rich.  The  cultivated  minister  will  not  ignore 
the  works  of  men  like  Hooker,  South,  Barrows,  Taylor,  Til- 
lotson,  Howe,  Bunyan,  Whitefield,  Hall,  Chalmers,  Robertson, 
Maclaren,  Jonathan  Edwards,  Bushnell,  Beecher,  and  Brooks. 
Nor  will  he  fail  to  study  sympathetically  and  critically  the 
sermons  of  the  living  preachers  who  best  understand  the  art 
of  putting  the  evangel  into  the  forms  that  win  and  hold  the 
modern  mind.  By  means  of  such  a  study  the  young  homilete 
comes  to  a  more  objective  understanding  of  himself.  He 
discovers  his  native  bent,  the  limitatiofts  of  his  gifts  and 
methods,  and  the  conditions  of  his  future  growth.  He  learns 
also  what  is  of  perennial  worth  in  the  substance  of  the  mes- 
sage itself,  so  that  he  may  the  more  boldly  proclaim,  not 
what  he  guesses  the  people  may  want,  but  what  he  knows  they 
must  need.  Care  has  to  be  exercised  in  securing  proper 
variety  in  the  representatives  chosen  for  special  consideration. 
There  will  then  be  no  danger  of  a  servile  imitation  or  of  a 
one-sided  and  eccentric  development.  The  aim  throughout  is 
something  more  than  a  mechanical  transfer  of  ideas  or  pe- 
culiarities of  form.  There  ought  to  be  a  real  transfusion  of 
spirit  from  the  master  to  his  reader.  And  for  this  purpose  the 
biographies  of  the  celebrated  preachers  are  an  invaluable  aid. 
They  admit  us  into  the  secret  of  those  vital  processes  that 
find  their  consummate  expression  in  the  finished  sermon.  They 
disclose  the  tools  and  methods  of  the  master's  workshop;  but 
more  than  that,  they  put  us  under  the  spell  of  his  nobler 
ideals.  In  such  an  atmosphere  we  feel  the  truth  of  Words- 
worth's lines: 

We  live  by  Admiration,  Hope  and  Love, 
And,  even  as  these  are  well  and  wisely  fixed, 
In  dignity  of  being  we  ascend. 
And  most  of  all,  technical  training  must  be  perfected  by 
the  actual  practice  of  the  art.    Fabricando  fabri  fimus.     The 
important  question  here  is  that  concerning  the  amount  of 
actual  pulpit  work  that  a  seminary  student  may  undertake 
during  his  course.     Obviously,   no  uniform  answer  can  be 
given.     Few  members  of  theological  faculties  would  approve 
the  suggestion  of  President  Faunce  of   Brown  University, 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE        421 

when  he  says :  the  department  of  homiletics  "  should  keep 
every  student  preaching  or  teaching  on  every  Sunday  during 
his  three  years  in  the  seminary,  and  so  make  sure  that,  whether 
he  have  ten  talents  or  one,  that  which  he  does  possess  is  not 
hidden  in  a  napkin,  but  ready  at  any  instant  for  the  service  of 
man  ".  Certainly,  this  is  an  extreme  which,  to  say  the  least, 
can  be  justified  only  in  extraordinary  cases.  From  the  stand- 
point of  good  work  in  homiletics  alone,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
just  claims  of  the  other  courses,  it  will  be  far  better,  in  this 
formative  period  of  the  preacher's  development  to  put  the 
emphasis  upon  quality  rather  than  quantity.  Many  a  tragedy 
in  the  early  and  later  years  of  ministerial  life  may  be  traced 
directly  back  to  those  misspent  years  of  preparation  when 
the  young  preacher,  quite  unconsciously,  his  judgment  warped 
by  the  deceptive  breezes  of  a  momentary  popular  favor,  irre- 
trievably sacrificed  his  worthiest  sermonic  ideals.  Far  more 
fortunate  will  be  the  student  who,  discouraging  all  excessive 
demands  upon  his  time  and  strength,  will  never  allow  himself 
to  become  accustomed  to,  much  less  satisfied  with,  any  inferior 
work,  but  will  resolutely  and  persistently,  by  dint  of  the  ut- 
most care  in  the  planning  and  writing  of  his  first  sermons  se- 
cure the  best  results  of  which  he  is  at  the  time  capable.  This 
being  conceded,  there  ought  to  be  abundant  classroom  exer- 
cises in  homiletic  technique.  The  custom  of  having  students 
preach  to  their  classmates  in  the  presence  of  the  teachers  who 
are  to  criticize  the  sermons  as  to  their  matter,  form  and  de- 
livery, is  often  made  a  subject  of  unfavorable  comment,  not 
to  say  of  cheap  ridicule.  No  doubt,  it  would  be  far  better  if 
the  same  audience  could  transfer  itself  to  the  more  con- 
genial atmosphere  of  some  regular  church  or  chapel  service, 
the  criticism  being  left  for  another  occasion.  But  this  is  sel- 
dom possible,  and  meanwhile  the  best  must  be  made  of  a  diffi- 
cult situation.  Even  under  these  circumstances,  however, 
great  good  can  be  done.  Where  the  criticism  is  what  it  should 
be,  incisive  yet  kindly,  thorough  but  sympathetic,  constructive 
rather  than  negative,  giving  new  and  better  points  of  view, 
supplementing  deficiencies,  making  the  most  of  the  strong 
qualities  of  the  preacher,  and  aiming  throughout  at  a  positive 
enrichment  of  his  homiletic  personality,  there,  as  my  experi- 


422 


HOMILETICS  AS  A  THEOLOGICAL  DISCIPLINE 


ence  leads  me  to  testify,  some  of  the  most  useful  and  there- 
fore by  the  students  most  highly  appreciated  work  of  the  de- 
partment may  be  accomplished.  Here  as  perhaps  nowhere 
else  the  instruction  of  the  seminary  may  be  made  vital,  per- 
sonal, and  in  the  deepest  sense  of  the  word  practical. 

I  have  done.  In  this  general  discussion  of  principles  and 
methods  I  have  contented  myself  with  the  simple  purpose  of 
unfolding  my  conception  of  the  work  to  which  I  have  been 
summoned.  But  believing  as  I  do,  that  our  evangelical 
churches  owe  their  very  life  to  the  faithful  preaching  of  the 
Word  of  God  and  that  the  prime  object  of  this  school  of  sacred 
learning  can  be  no  other  than  the  training  of  able  and  efficient 
ministers  of  the  gospel  who  may  continue  to  be  what  their  pred- 
ecessors from  apostolic  days  have  ever  been,  the  most  useful 
men  of  their  day  and  generation,  I  must  utterly  have  missed 
my  aim  in  this  address,  if  I  have  not  succeeded  in  making  clear 
my  sincere  conviction,  that  in  the  modern  theological  seminary, 
the  department  of  homiletics,  as  the  cutting  edge  of  the  whole 
curriculum  and  the  meeting-place  in  which  the  best  cultural 
influences  and  the  strongest  spiritual  forces  of  the  institution 
are  most  directly  and  fully  converted  into  power  for  service  in 
the  kingdom  of  God,  is  second  in  dignity  and  importance  to 
no  other.  Alas!  that  here,  too,  however,  it  is  far  easier  to 
form  than  to  realize  one's  ideal.  But  taking  encouragement 
from  the  call  which  has  been  given  me,  and  from  the  cordial 
welcome  of  my  colleagues  in  the  Faculty  and  the  student  body 
as  a  whole,  as  well  as  from  the  year's  work  I  have  already 
been  permitted  to  do,  I  shall  continue  to  find  my  chief  comfort 
and  support  in  him  from  whom  cometh  all  our  help.  May  his 
strength  perfect  itself  in  my  weakness,  and  his  grace  glorify 
itself  in  filling  up  the  measure  of  my  varied  need,  that  my 
labor  in  this  chair  may  be  for  the  good  of  his  church  and  to 
the  praise  of  his  name. 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  BIBLICAL 
NARRATIVES  REHEARSED  IN  THE  KORAN 

James  Oscar  Boyd 


Introduction:  Explanation  of  the  subject;  summary  of  the  material;  pecu- 
liarities of  the  Koran  aflfecting  this  material : 

All  uttered  by  Allah;  all  addressed  to""  an  individual;  all  cast 
in  the  oratorical  mold. 
Sin  and  Grace: 
i)     In  the  narrative  of  the  fall: 

Sin  of  Adam  and  Eve:  its  nature  and  consequences;  its  expla- 
nation in  the  fall  of  Satan  and  his  tempting  of  them. 

Grace  of  God  to  sinful  man:  central  grace  is  revelation;  its 
mediation  to  Adam  left  vague ;  other  gracious  gifts  to  mankind. 
2)     In  the  progress  of  individual  wickedness  and  of  divine  direction : 

Conception  of  progressive  revelation:  soundness  of  its  frame- 
work; in  what  sense  it  is  an  evangel;  its  universality  and  per- 
spicuity; the  relation  of  these  qualities  to  a  limited  election. 

Conception  of  sin  in  the  individual :  root  religious  rather  than 
ethical ;  sins  against  God,  apostle  and  gospel ;  transgression  of  the 
moral   law. 
Conclusion:    Suitability  of  kindred  themes  for  further  comparison. 

(Note. — Quotations  from  the  Koran  are  rendered  from  the  Arabic  edi- 
tion of  Fluegel,  Leipsic,  1841.) 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  BIBLICAL 
NARRATIVES  REHEARSED  IN  THE  KORAN 

Much  has  been  written  by  many  scholars  on  the  subject  of 
Mohammed's  indebtedness  to  the  Scriptures.  In  particular 
his  use  of  the  Biblical  narratives  as  the  basis  of  much  of  his 
preachment  in  the  Koran  has  awakened  a  variety  of  comment, 
and  from  authors  varying  all  the  way  from  the  professional 
Arabist  to  the  missionary  apologist.  Moreover,  since  1833, 
when  Abraham  Geiger  published  his  study^  entitled  What  Did 
Mohammed  Adopt  from  Judaism f  there  has  been  a  growing 
literature  on  the  genetic  relation  sustained  by  Judaism  to  Islam, 
including  on  the  one  side  an  investigation  of  the  Moslem  com- 
mentators, and  on  the  other  side  a  comparison  of  all  the  cog- 
nate material  in  the  Jewish  midrash-literature.  That  this  last- 
named  comparison,  however,  is  not  even  yet  felt  to  be  fairly 
completed,  is  indicated  by  the  present  appearance  of  a  new 
work^  on  The  Haggadic  Elements  in  the  Narrative  Portion  of 
the  Koran. 

Similarly,  it  may  be  felt  that,  with  all  that  has  hitherto 
been  said,  and  well  said,  concerning  Mohammed's  use  of  the 
Old  Testament  characters  and  events,  the  last  word  has  not 
yet  been  written  on  even  this  familiar  subject.  There  is  yet 
lacking,  for  example,  a  systematic  grouping  of  the  material, 
the  usual  arrangement  of  which  has  been  the  chronological 
order — surely  a  principle  as  foreign  as  possible  to  Mohammed's 
unchronological  mind!  Let  what  has  been  said,  then,  suffice 
as  an  apology  for  the  choice  of  the  subject  of  this  paper, 
which  will  not  pretend  to  say  that  "  last  word  ",  but  will 

^  Was  hat  Mohammed  aus  dem  Judenthume  aufgenommen?  by  Abraham 
Geiger,  Bonn,  1833. 

'Die  haggadischen  Elemente  im  erz'dhlenden  Teil  des  Koran,  by  Dr. 
Israel  Schapiro;  Heft  I  covers  the  life  of  Joseph. 


426  SIN   AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 

seek,  within  well-defined  limits,  to  contribute  something  to 
this  comparison,  which  is  so  fruitful  for  the  correct  under- 
standing of  Mohammed  and  his  mission. 

What  those  limits  are,  is  indicated  in  the  title.  By  it  the 
inquiry  is  limited,  first,  to  those  parts  of  the  Koran  which  are 
indebted  to  the  Bible  for  their  subject-matter;  second,  within 
these,  to  that  which  deals  with  persons,  places  and  events. — 
the  narrative-material;  and  third,  within  this  again,  to  the 
treatment  of  the  themes  of  sin  and  grace,  which  play  so 
large  a  part  in  the  purpose  of  the  story-teller  both  in  the 
Bible  and  in  the  Koran. 

In  order  to  have  the  facts  before  us,  in  their  broad  out- 
lines, it  will  be  necessary,  first,  to  state  as  briefly  as  possible 
what  Biblical  narratives  are  reflected  in  the  Koran. 

Of  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  Grenesis  much  is  represented : 
the  stories  of  creation,  including  matter  from  both  the  first  and 
the  second  chapters ;  the  fall ;  the  brothers'  quarrel ;  Enoch  (  ?)  ; 
Noah  and  the  flood;  the  dispersion  of  the  nations;  and  the 
family  of  Terah. 

With  Abraham  we  reach  a  character  whose  career  is  ex- 
panded in  both  the  Old  Testament  and  the  Koran.  His  separa- 
tion from  Terah,  the  ratification  of  the  covenant  in  chapter 
XV.,  the  birth  of  Ishmael  and  of  Isaac,  the  episode  of  Lot,  and 
the  sacrifice  of  Isaac, — to  all  these  portions  of  Abraham's 
biography  reference  is  made  by  Mohammed  with  greater  or 
less  fullness. 

As  Isaac  appears  only  in  connection  with  Abraham,  so 
Jacob,  apart  from  a  couple  of  bare  allusions  to  him,  appears 
only  as  a  character  in  the  story  of  Joseph.  But  there  is  a 
wealth  of  detail  in  the  treatment  of  Joseph's  life,  most  of 
which  is  covered  in  the  long  Sura  devoted  thereto. 

With  Exodus  Moses  is  reached,  and  there  is  no  other  Bibli- 
cal character  so  thoroughly  appropriated  by  the  Koran  as  is 
Moses.  The  story  begins  with  the  oppression  by  Pharaoh 
and  the  slaying  of  the  male  children.  Moses'  rescue  from  the 
water  by  the  wife  (sic)  of  Pharaoh,  his  adoption,  and  the  part 
his  own  mother  and  sister  play  in  the  drama,  are  all  reflected 
in  the  Koranic  story.  The  two  attempts  to  help  his  Hebrew 
brethren,  the  consequent  flight  to  Midian,  the  meeting  with 


SIN  AND   GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN  427 

Jethro's  daughters,  and  his  marriage  with  one  of  them  and  ser- 
vice of  their  father  as  shepherd,  the  account  of  the  burning 
bush  with  the  divine  call,  the  accrediting  miracles  and  the 
commission  of  Aaron  as  spokesman: — all  this  leads  up,  in 
Mohammed's  account  as  in  Exodus,  to  the  narrative  of  the 
plagues.  From  the  contest  with  the  Egyptian  magicians  to 
the  departure  from  Egypt  by  night,  most  of  the  story  of  the 
plagues  is  recorded  or  alluded  to.  The  Egyptian  pursuit,  the 
crossing  of  the  sea  dry-shod  and  drowning  of  the  enemy, 
the  manna  and  quails,  the  arrival  and  covenant  at  Sinai,  God's 
rendezvous  with  Moses  on  the  mount,  Aaron's  lieutenancy  to- 
gether with  the  whole  episode  of  the  golden  calf,  Moses' 
wrath,  intercession  and  publication  of  the  tables  of  the  Law — 
this  fills  in  with  tolerable  completeness  the  outline  of  the  his- 
torical portions  of  Exodus.  The  remainder  of  Moses'  career, 
as  depicted  in  portions  of  Numbers  and  Deuteronomy,  is  rep- 
resented in  the  Koran  by  allusions  to  the  smitten  rock,  the 
murmuring  of  the  Israelites,  their  refusal  and  consequent  pro- 
hibition to  enter  the  "  holy  land  ",  the  revolt  of  Korah,  and — 
what  is  purely  legal  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  is  transformed 
into  a  story  by  Mohammed, — the  red  heifer  of  Numbers  xix., 
combined  with  the  heifer  mentioned  in  Deuteronomy  xxi. 

There  is  no  indication  that  the  contents  of  the  books  of 
Joshua  and  Judges  were  known  to  Mohammed,  save  one  ref- 
erence to  Gideon's  odd  test  of  his  followers  by  drinking,  and 
this  is  erroneously  ascribed  to  Saul.  But  with  Samuel  and  the 
choice  of  Saul  we  again  reach  stories  for  which  the  Koran 
finds  a  place.  The  earlier  part  of  the  struggle  with  the  Philis- 
tines is  probably  represented  by  an  allusion  to  the  ark  as 
"  coming  "  to  Israel.  David's  victory  over  Goliath  is  expressly 
mentioned.  David's  skill  in  music  and  his  authorship  of  the 
Psalms,  his  sin  and  repentance,  together  with  the  substance 
of  Nathan's  parable  and  the  restoration  of  David  to  divine 
favor: — these  constitute  all  of  the  remainder  of  Samuel  that 
finds  a  place  in  the  Moslem  Scriptures. 

Solomon  plays  a  larger  role.  In  the  Koran,  as  in  other 
oriental  literature,  his  judgments,  his  splendor,  his  buildings, 
his  wisdom  and  knowledge  of  nature,  and  the  visit  to  him 
of  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  have  appealed  to  the  author's  imagina- 


428  SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 

tion.  Elijah's  contest  with  the  Baal-worshippers  is  the  only- 
other  incident  in  the  books  of  Kings  to  receive  Mohammed's 
attention.  Elisha  is  barely  named.  Ezra  is  mentioned,  merely 
to  rebuke  the  Jews  for  saying  of  him  that  he  is  the  Son  of  God. 

Among  the  narratives  embedded  in  the  poetical  and  pro- 
phetical books  of  the  Old  Testament,  those  which  have  ap- 
pealed to  Mohammed  are  the  story  of  Job  and  the  story  of 
Jonah.  Job's  afflictions,  prayers,  patience,  deliverance,  and 
acceptance  with  God,  all  find  a  place  in  the  few  verses  that 
refer  to  him.  And  of  Jonah  we  learn  from  the  Koran  that 
he  was  a  prophet,  how  he  withdrew  frorrT  God's  mission,  of 
the  casting  of  the  lots  on  the  ship,  his  being  swallowed  by 
the  fish  (he  is  known  to  Mohammed  as  "  He  of  the  fish"), 
his  prayer  from  its  belly,  his  deliverance,  the  growth  of  the 
gourd,  Jonah's  preaching  and  its  success. 

Turning  now  to  the  New  Testament,  we  find  none  of  its 
narratives  reproduced,  save  a  perverted  version  of  the  angelic 
announcement  to  Zacharias,  his  dumbness  for  a  season,  and 
the  birth  and  naming  of  John;  and,  mingled  with  the  events 
in  this  family,  the  similar  events  in  the  kindred  family  of 
Jesus:  the  annunciation,  the  miraculous  conception  and  the 
birth  of  our  Lord.  But  through  the  crassest  anachronism  this 
cycle  of  sacred  story  is  united  with  the  cycles  of  Moses-stories 
and  Samuel-stories,  by  the  confusion  of  Mary  (Maryam)  with 
Miriam  the  sister  of  Moses  and  Aaron,  and  the  confusion  of 
Anna  the  (traditional)  mother  of  Mary  with  Hannah  the 
mother  of  Samuel.  So  that  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
for  Mohammed  there  are  no  New  Testament  narratives ;  such 
as  he  knows  are  amalgamated  with  those  of  the  Old  Testament. 
For  references  to  Jesus'  life  and  death  amount  to  little  more 
than  allusions;  as,  for  instance,  to  his  miracles,  his  mission, 
to  Israel,  his  institution  of  the  Supper,  his  promise  of  the 
Paraclete  (Ahmed,  i.  e.  Mohammed),  his  attitude  toward  the 
Law,  and  the  Jews'  hostility  to  him  resulting  in  their  crucify- 
ing— not  Jesus  but  a  man  who  resembled  him,  Jesus  himself 
being  translated  without  tasting  of  death.  Our  Lord's  Apos- 
tles are  barely  mentioned,  under  the  style  Hawari, — a  word 
borrowed  from  the  language  of  the  Abyssinian  Church,  since 
the   Arabic   equivalent   Rasul   is   Mohammed's   favorite   ap- 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN  429 

pellation  of  himself  and  his  predecessors  as  the  "  Sent  "  of 
God. 

Such  being  the  material  available  for  our  inquiry,  we  pro- 
ceed first  to  note  certain  characteristic  formal  differences, 
that  have  had  the  effect  of  molding  this  material,  taken  as  a 
whole,  into  different  forms  from  those  it  exhibits  in  the  Bible. 

The  first  of  these  formal  peculiarities  of  the  Koran  is  that 
every  word  of  it  is  supposed  to  be  uttered  by  Allah  himself. 
This  oracular  style  is  not  foreign  to  the  Bible,  but  it  is  there 
confined  for  the  most  part  to  limited  portions  of  the  prophetic 
discourse  and  to  the  laws.  By  no  means  all  of  the  matter  in- 
troduced or  completed  with  a  "  saith  Jehovah  "  is  so  molded 
by  the  prophets  as  to  read  like  a  divine  utterance  to  them  or, 
through  their  lips,  to  the  people.  In  fact  there  is  so  constant 
a  variation  between  the  first  and  the  third  persons  in  such 
passages,  when  referring  to  the  revealing  deity,  that  it  amounts 
to  what  may  be  termed  a  consistent  inconsistency,  and  only 
logical  analysis  can  resolve  the  blended  personality  of  the 
revelatory  subject.  We  should  err  in  using  of  an  Isaiah  so 
harsh  an  expression  as  has  been  used  of  Mohammed,^  that 
"  he  falls  out  of  his  role  ".  Mohammed's  claims  are  quite  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  the  Hebrew  prophets.  The  dictation,  or 
rather  recitation  ( Koran  =  reading  aloud)  of  a  portion  {aya) 
from  a  heavenly  book  by  the  archangel  Gabriel  to  the  listen- 
ing Mohammed,  is  quite  unlike  what  the  prophets  of  Israel 
have  to  say  of  their  revelations,  even  when  they  insist  most 
strongly  upon  their  objectivity,  certainty  and  divinity. 

If  this  is  true  of  the  Biblical  prophecies,  how  much  greater 
still  is  the  contrast  between  the  utter  freedom  of  the  Biblical 
narratives  and  the  stiffness  of  the  Koran!  It  is  obvious  that 
these  must  undergo  a  great  change  in  being  recast  in  accord- 
ance with  the  conception  that  God  is  the  speaker.  The  facts 
and  actors  must  be  viewied  as  from  the  seventh  heaven.  His- 
tory must  be  conceived  suh  specie  aeternifatis. 

And  it  rriust  be  said  to  the  credit  of  Mohammed  that  this 
exalted  level  is  remarkably  well  maintained.    The  hold  of  this 

'E.  g.  by  H.  P.  Smith  in  The  Bible  and  Islam,  p.  66,  in  referring  spe- 
cially to  Sura  xi.  37. 


430 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 


book  upon  Islam  through  all  the  centuries  and  lands  is  un- 
doubtedly due  to  its  power  to  appeal  to  the  religious  imagina- 
tion, to  transport  its  readers  into  the  same  frame  of  mind,  to 
enable  men  of  narrow  views  to  see  themselves  and  one  another 
as  transient,  trivial  and  helpless  creatures  of  an  eternal,  al- 
mighty, self-sufficient  Lord.  Even  the  woeful  lapses  from 
this  high  God-centered  ideal  of  the  Koran  have  not  been  able 
to  destroy  its  power  of  lofty  appeal,  because  Mohammed 
succeeded  in  so  interweaving  his  own  personality  and  inter- 
ests with  those  of  deity,  that  even  selfish  ends,  the  temporary 
makeshifts  of  a  time-server,  and  the  weaknesses  of  a  sinful 
man  are  made  to  appear  in  the  rosy  light  of  a  divine  interest 
and  commendation. 

Yet  Allah  in  the  role  of  a  story-teller  has  necessarily  some- 
thing absurd  about  it.  "  We  are  going  to  relate  to  thee  the 
best  of  stories  in  our  revealing  to  thee  this  recital  ",^ — such 
is  the  introduction  to  the  long  narrative  of  Joseph's  life ;  and  at 
its  close  the  divine  story-teller  warns  his  human  rdwt  that 
he  is  '*  not  to  demand  pay  for  "^  reciting  the  story.  And  at 
the  conclusion  of  the  story  of  Moses  in  Siira  xxviii.  Allah  is 
actually  made  to  boast  of  his  superior  facilities  in  obtaining 
the  information  implied  in  the  teller  of  these  tales,  seeing  that 
he  was  present  and  active  in  those  scenes:  "Thou  wast  not 
present  on  the  Westward  Side^  when  we  communicated  the 
Commandment  unto  Moses,  nor  wast  thou  among  the  wit- 
nesses .  .  .  nor  wast  thou  dwelling  among  the  people  of 
Midian  rehearsing  our  revelations  unto  them;  yet  we  have 
sent  (thee)  as  (our)  messenger  "."^ 

The  second  pervasive  difference  in  the  form  of  these  nar- 
ratives arises  from  their  being  addressed  primarily  to  an  in- 
dividual. Like  all  the  rest  of  the  Koran,  they  are  intended 
for  the  ears  of  many — for  Mohammed's  own  tribe  of  Koreish 
in  the  earlier  Suras,  later  for  various  groups  of  men,  Jews, 
Christians,  "Helpers",  "Emigrants",  all  men  of  Arabian 
speech,  or  even  all  the  "  sons  of  Adam  " ; — but  only  through 
Mohammed's  mediation.    Whenever  there  is  a  "  ye  "  of  direct 

*  Siira  xii.  3.  » Ibid.,  104. 

•Viz.,  of  Sinai.  '  Sura  xxviii.  44  f. 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN  431 

address,  there  is  an  actual  or  an  implied  "  say  thou  "  pre- 
ceding it,  and  much  of  the  Koran  would  have  to  be  printed 
between  quotation-marks,  if  the  devices  of  modern  printing 
were  employed.  Often  also  Allah  talks  to  Mohammed  about 
those  who  are  to  be  influenced  by  the  revelation,  referring  to 
them  in  the  third  person. 

When  this  peculiarity  of  the  Mohammedan  revelation  in 
general  is  considered  in  connection  with  the  narratives  in 
particular,  its  effect  upon  them  is  seen  to  be  strikmg.  There 
is  such  a  complication  in  the  machinery  of  expression  as  to 
cumber  the  whole,  and  the  machinery  threatens  at  any  moment 
to  break  down.  There  are  wheels  within  wheels.  The  actual 
human  author  (Mohammed)  has  to  represent  the  supposed 
author  (Allah)  as  telling  the  real  author  to  tell  others  about 
how  somebody  else  did  this  or  that,  or — worse  still — said  this 
or  that.  When  these  characters  in  the  story  are  to  answer  their 
interlocutor,  or  when  former  words  of  Allah  addressed  to  any 
of  the  parties  in  the  story  are  to  be  rehearsed,  the  confusion 
becomes  unparalleled.  It  is  no  wonder  then  that  Mohammed 
occasionally  "  falls  out  of  his  role  ",  particularly  when  we  con- 
sider that  to  his  lively  imagination  he  is  but  painting  himself 
in  the  character  of  the  ancient  "  prophet "  of  his  story,  and 
his  own  hearers  in  the  character  of  those  ancient  auditors. 
Even  when  the  author  cannot  be  charged  with  so  serious  a 
fault,  it  is  often  difficult  or  impossible  to  say  of  this  or  that 
sentence  whether  it  was  meant  to  be  a  part  of  the  story,  or  to 
interrupt  it  with  an  appropriate  comment  (addressed  to  Mo- 
hammed).^ 

A  third  formal  peculiarity  that  differentiates  the  Koran, 
even  in  its  narrative-portions,  from  the  Bible,  is  the  exclusively 
oral  or  oratorical  mold  of  the  Koran.  Whatever  may  be 
thought  of  the  origin  of  the  Old  Testament  stories,  they  are 
not  clothed,  as  we  read  them,  in  a  literary  style  that  can  be 
described  as  oratorical.  How  they  would  sound  if  they  were 
so  constructed,  may  be  seen  from  such  passages  as  the  first 
four  chapters  of  Deuteronomy,  or  the  last  chapter  of  Joshua. 
Comparison  of  these  and  similar  passages  with  the  Koran 

*  So,  e.  g.,  Sura  xl.  37. 


432 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 


affords  an  instructive  parallel ;  for  it  reveals  how,  to  the  ora- 
tor, his  role  affects  not  only  the  manner  of  his  narration,  but 
his  selection  of  material.  He  is  always  a  man  of  his  day. 
To  convince  and  move  his  audience  is  his  one  aim.  What 
therefore  he  draws  from  the  past  in  narrative  must  be  so 
obviously  instructive  and  decisive  for  the  hearers,  that  they 
cannot  fail  to  recognize  the  lesson  for  the  present  conveyed  by 
that  past.  It  is  this,  more  than  any  other  consideration,  that 
has  determined  Mohammed's  attitude  towards  the  Biblical  nar- 
ratives, in  selecting,  recasting  and  applying  them. 

With  these  preliminary  observations  upon  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  Koranic  narratives  we  are  ready  to  pass  to  the 
examination  of  that  specific  phase  of  them  which  has  to  do 
with  their  treatment,  first,  of  human  sin,  and  secondly,  of 
divine  grace.  No  doubt  these  two  subjects,  sin  and  grace,  are 
important  chapters  in  any  theology  of  the  Koran  in  general. 
But  we  are  to  be  concerned,  not  with  sin  and  grace  in  the 
Moslem  theology  which  has  been  developed  out  of  the  Koran 
supplemented  by  traditions,  but  with  sin  and  grace  as  they 
appear  in  the  narratives  drawn  from  the  Bible.^  We  accord- 
ingly observe,  first,  Mohammed's  treatment  of  the  narrative  of 
the  fall.i<> 

The  sin  of  the  protoplasts  consisted  in  their  eating  of  the 
fruit  of  a  tree  in  paradise  that  is  described  as  a  "  tree  of 
eternity  ".^^     To  this  act  they  are  led  by  Satan.     He  uses 

•To  attempt  an  historical  treatment  of  Mohammed's  teaching,  within 
these  limits,  would  no  doubt  be  theoretically  desirable;  but  it  is  rendered 
impracticable  by  the  obscurity  which  veils  the  order  of  its  delivery,  and  the 
consequent  disagreement  of  scholars  in  constructing  historical  schemes  of 
doctrinal  development. 

"This  is  told  in  Siiras  ii.,  vii.,  xv.,  xvii.,  xx.  and  xxxviii.,  and  alluded  to 
in  Suras  xviii.  and  xxxiv. 

"xx.  ii8.  With  this  phrase  is  combined  the  parallel  expression,  "and 
a  kingdom  that  fadeth  not  away".  Moreover,  Satan  declares  the  reason 
for  the  divine  prohibition  to  be,  to  prevent  Adam  and  his  wife  from  *'  be- 
coming angels  or  becoming  of  the  immortals  ".  Yet  though  the  tree  is  else- 
where indicated  only  by  the  pronoun  "  this  ",  its  character  is  assimilated 
to  the  "  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil "  in  Sura  vii.,  where  both 
Satan's  "whispering"  to  the  human  pair  and  their  consequent  partaking 
of  the  fruit  are  connected  with  the  discovery  to  them  of  their  nakedness. 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN   THE  KORAN 


433 


deceit  to  accomplish  his  purpose.  The  deceit  consists  in  awak- 
ening in  them  ambition  to  ''  become  angels  or  of  the  immor- 
tals ",  in  suggesting  a  hostile  purpose  in  God,  who  prevents 
them  by  his  prohibition  from  attaining  this,  in  denying  with 
an  oath  that  he  is  the  enemy  to  them  that  God  has  represented 
him  to  be,  and  of  whom  he  has  warned  them,  and  in  assert- 
ing his  own  benevolent  intentions. ^^ 

The  immediate  consequences  of  this  act  of  ''  forgetfulness  ", 
"  irresoluteness  "  and  "  disobedience  "  ^^  are  the  "  discovery  " 
of  what  had  been  "  hidden  "  from  them,  namely  their  "  naked- 
ness ",^*  so  that  they  "  set  about  sewing  leaves  of  the  garden 
to  put  upon  themselves  " ;  the  divine  "  summons  "  and  re- 
minder of  his  prohibition  and  warning;  the  recognition  of 
their  having  "  done  a  wrong  to  themselves  ",  which  would  in- 
volve their  "  destruction  "  or  "  loss  " ;  and  their  banishment 
from  the  garden.  ^^ 

The  more  general  and  remote  consequences  of  the  trans- 
gression embrace  the  "  Beni  Adam "  as  well  as  the  trans- 
gressors themselves  in  a  state  that  is  characterized  by  mutual 
hostility, ^^  by  misery,  ^^  and  by  constant  exposure  to  the  moral 
assaults  of  Satan, ^^  with  their  inevitable  issue  for  all  those  who 
succumb, — "  the  Fire  "  of  "  Gehannem  "  forever. ^^ 

The  terms  used  in  the  compass  of  these  narratives  to  de- 
scribe the  operations  of  Satan  upon  mankind  are :  to  cause  to 
slip  or  stumble,^^  to  delude^^  (literally,  to  let  down  by  de- 
lusion), to  allure  (apparently  by  making  evil  appear  attrac- 
tive), to  seduce  or  cause  to  err^^  (the  same  act  as  Satan  at- 

"vii.  19,  21,  XX.  115,  118. 

"xx.  114,  119.    "Revolt"  is  perhaps  better  than  "disobedience". 

^*  Apparently  by  stripping  off  something  that  could  be  called  libds,  vii.  26. 
Cf.  Ginzberg,  The  Legends  of  the  Jews,  vol.  i,  p.  74. 

"It  is  difficult  to  harmonize  Sura  ii.  28  with  other  indications  of  the 
original  home  of  the  race.  We  read  there  that  God  said  to  the  angels, 
before  the  creation  of  man,  "  Behold,  we  are  about  to  place  on  the  earth 
a  representative  (chalifa)".  But  in  the  account  of  the  fall  we  read  repeat- 
edly, "Get  you  down"  (viz.  from  paradise  to  earth),  and  the  humorous 
remark  is  often  made  that  Mohammed  believed  in  a  literal  fall. 

^'ii.  34,  vii.  23,  XX.  121.  "xx.  115,  122  f. 

"vii.  26,  cf.  15  f.  'Mi.  37,  vii.  17,  xv.  43,  xvii.  64,  etc. 

^'ii.  34.  "vii.  21.  **xv.  39,  xxxviii.  83. 


434  SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 

tributes  to  God  as  the  cause  of  his  own  fall),  to  take  complete 
mastery  over,^^  to  affright,^*  to  attack  as  with  an  army.^'^ 

The  story  of  Satan's  fall  does  not  belong  to  the  Biblical  nar- 
rative itself,  but  it  has  been  brought  by  Mohammed,  following 
his  Jewish  teachers,  into  such  close  connection  with  the  story 
of  the  fall  of  man,  that  the  one  cannot  be  studied  without 
reference  to  the  other.  In  the  Koran  the  beginning  of  evil 
is  coincident  with  the  creation  of  man  and  associated  there- 
with. A  great  drama  is  unfolded  in  which  God,  the  angels 
and  Adam  play  their  respective  parts,  with  the  result  of  intro- 
ducing a  moral  distinction  among  the  angels.  For  the  angels 
are  represented  at  first  as  acquiescing  reverently  in  the  divine 
wisdom,  though  inscrutable  to  them,  when  God  proposes  to 
make  man,  and  in  the  divine  ordinance  in  giving  knowledge 
to  his  creatures  or  w'ithholding  it  from  them,  when  God  en- 
dows man  with  ability  to  name  the  animals — an  ability  which 
the  angels  do  not  possess.  But  there  arises  subsequently  the 
first  moral  schism,  when  God  commands  them  to  prostrate 
themselves  before  Adam.  Iblis  .(  Am/9oXo9  )  re  fuses.  ^^  The 
evil  phases  of  this  refusal  are  not  left  to  the  reader's  imagi- 
nation. "  Pride  "  is  repeatedly  specified  as  its  inward  accom- 
paniment and  cause.  "  Denial  ",  that  is  to  say,  refusal  to 
recognize  the  right  of  God  to  his  creatures'  faith,  gratitude 
and  fealty,  is  ascribed  to  Iblis ;  he  becomes  the  first  "kafir  *\ 
His  hostility  to  men  is  explicitly  traced  to  his  purpose  thereby 
to  revenge  himself  on  God  for  having  "  seduced  "  him.  This 
malignity  of  purpose  is  matched  by  a  confidence  in  the  power 
of  evil  (or,  self-confidence),  which  enables  him  to  predict  that 
most  of  mankind  will  become  his  followers,  "  unthankful  " 
to  God,^^ — an  opinion,  by  the  way,  that  seems  to  coincide  with 

"xvii.  64.  "xvii.  66.  '^  Ibid. 

"In  Sura  xviii.  48  Iblis  is  called  "one  of  th€  Ginn  ".  Sale  (The  Koran 
with  Explanatory  Notes)  has  this  note  on  the  passage  (p.  243)  :  "  Hence 
some  [Arabic  commentators]  imagine  the  genii  are  a  species  of  angels: 
others  suppose  the  devil  to  have  been  originally  a  genius,  which  was  the 
occasion  of  his  rebellion,  and  call  him  the  father  of  the  genii,  whom  he 
begat  after  his  fall ;  it  being  a  constant  opinion  among  the  Mohammedans,, 
that  the  angels  are  impeccable,  and  do  not  propagate  their  species." 

"vii.  16. 


SIN  AND   GRACE  IN   THE  KORAN 


435 


the  preconceived  opinion  of  man  entertained  by  the  angels  be- 
fore his  creation.-^ 

Such  being  the  idea  entertained  by  Mohammed  concerning 
the  introduction  of  evil,  into  the  human  race  and  into  the 
created  universe,  respectively,  as  derived  from  his  stories  of 
creation  and  the  fall,  the  attitude  of  God  towards  this  revolt 
of  his  creatures  becomes  the  subject  of  primary  interest. 
What  degree  of  grace  is  ascribed  to  Allah  in  determining  the 
penal  consequences  of  their  sin?  How  is  that  grace  to  be 
mediated  to  man  ?    What  is  to  determine  its  application  ? 

The  great,  central  grace  of  God  revealed  in  these  narratives 
consists  in  guidance  through  revelation.  Consistently  with 
the  metaphor  of  life  as  a  path,  the  Koran  extols  the  divine 
grace  in  providing  for  those  who  have  erred  from  the  true 
path  a  "  direction  "  from  heaven,  that  enables  them  to  follow 
the  right  and  safe  course  to  a  fortunate  goal.  Just  as  the 
Koran  itself  is  the  one  great  miracle  of  Islam,  so  its  concep- 
tion of  the  redemption  of  fallen  man  resolves  itself  ultimately 
into  revelation  to  him:  a  revelation  that  is  not  only  a  dis- 
criminating test,  exculpating  those  who  receive  it  and  ir- 
remediably incriminating  those  who  refuse  it,  but  also  in  it- 
self a  grace,  an  unmerited  proof  and  product  of  the  divine 
rahma,  or  pitying  love.^^  The  first  token  of  God's  mercy 
upon  Adam  is  that  Adam  *'  found  words  from  his  Lord  "  :^^ 
evidently,  words  by  means  of  which  he  could  approach  God 
in  penitence  and  petition.  For  the  consequence  of  this  gift 
is  said  to  be  that  ''  God  turned  unto  him  ",  that  is,  forgave 
him;  "  for  ,"  adds  Mohammed,  "  he  is  inclined  to  turn  (forgiv- 
ing) and  merciful.  "^^ 

The  mediation  of  this  divine  revelation  is  no  uncertain 
matter  in  the  case  of  mankind  in  its  later  generations,  as  will 
appear  subsequently.  But  in  the  case  of  Adam  and  Eve  it  is 
a  subject  that  is  left  vague,  perhaps  intentionally  vague.  The 
verb  "  found  ",  by  which  Mohammed  expresses  the  way  Adam 

^ii.  28.  ""H.  36,  XX.  121.  ^ii.  35. 

'Mt  should  be  noted  that  the  Arabic  uses  the  same  word  for  man's 
repentance  and  God's  forgiveness:  each  party  "turns"  or  "returns"  to 
the  other;  cf.  with  such  passages  as  Joel  ii.  12-14. 


436  SIN   AND  GRACE  IN   THE  KORAN 

got  those  "  words  from  his  Lord  ",  is  the  vaguest  possible  word 
for  getting:  it  is  getting  in  the  sense  of  lighting  upon  some- 
thing that  one  meets  in  his  path.  It  may  be  that  Mohammed 
intended  thereby  to  avoid  the  confusion  of  these  "  words  " 
with  the  *'  direction  "  promised  in  response  to  that  penitence 
of  Adam  which  he  voiced  in  those  very  "  words  ".  Yet  the 
whole  subject  of  an  Adamic  revelation  remains  obscure  in  the 
Koran,  and  the  ideas  of  its  author  can  only  be  inferred  from 
the  kindred  notions  of  his  predecessors  and  successors  in  the 
genealogy  of  haggadic  speculation. 

But  besides  this  central  act  of  divine  grace  in  the  "  direc- 
tion "  of  erring  man,  the  narrative  of  the  fall  exhibits  other 
manifestations  of  God's  grace  to  his  sinful  creatures.  Even 
Satan,  for  the  mere  asking  and  without  so  much  as  a  hint  of 
penitence,  obtains  reprieve  till  the  day  of  resurrection.  Adam 
himself,  though  banished  from  the  garden,  has  a  settled 
abiding-place  and  sufficient  provision  assigned  him  and  his 
progeny.  This  gift  is  not  granted,  however,  without  repent- 
ance and  supplication  on  the  part  of  Adam  and  Eve.  When 
they  have  acknowledged  their  offence  and  begged  for  for- 
giveness and  mercy,  they  obtain  these  tokens  of  the  divine 
clemency.  At  the  same  time  it  should  be  observed  that  all 
these  gracious  gifts,  of  which  a  habitation,  food,  drink,  shade, 
clothing  and  adornments  are  enumerated,  are  called  by  the 
same  word,  dydt,  by  which  Mohammed  designates  all  God's 
signs  and  revelations,  including  the  Koran  itself.  The  central 
grace  is  thus  never  lost  sight  of  in  the  details,  which  derive 
their  worth,  it  appears,  from  their  power  to  reveal  to  man  the 
knowledge  of  God  and  his  will. 

We  may  best  discuss  the  relation  which  the  grace  of  God 
thus  manifested  to  Adam  and  his  posterity  taken  as  a  whole 
sustains  to  the  salvation  of  the  individual  man,  when  we  have 
passed — as  we  shall  at  once  pass — to  those  later  stages  of 
revelation  in  which  individuals,  other  than  the  first  pair,  are 
concerned.  Of  that  first  pair  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  evi- 
dently the  belief  of  the  author  of  the  Koran  that  in  their  case 
the  grace  of  God  was  "  not  in  vain  ",  but  that  they  became 
sharers  in  eternal  felicity. 


SIN   AND  GRACE  IN   THE  KORAN  437 

The  second  section  of  our  inquiry  will  therefore  be  an 
attempt  to  trace  the  grace  of  God  in  his  progressive  revela- 
tions to  mankind  through  the  apostles  he  has  raised  up  in 
historical  succession,  and,  together  with  this,  the  relation  of 
the  individual  man  to  the  revelation  of  his  day,  the  sin  of  man 
which  necessitated  a  revelation,  and  the  sin  which  was  involved 
in  its  rejection. 

However  ill  we  may  think  of  Mohammed's  notions  of  his- 
tory, chronology  and  geography,  we  cannot  withhold  a  certain 
measure  of  admiration  for  a  man  of  his  opportunities  and 
attainments  who  has  succeeded  in  so  grasping  the  essential 
facts  in  the  progress  of  divine  revelation  as  to  be  able  to  write : 
"  Verily  God  has  chosen  Adam  and  Noah  and  the  people  of 
Abraham  and  the  people  of  Imran  above  all  creatures,  a 
genealogical  succession  one  from  another."  The  context  of 
this  verse  shows  that  by  Imran  is  here  meant  the  father  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  so  that,  even  if  Mohammed  is  to  be  charged 
with  a  confusion  of  Mary  with  Miriam  the  sister  of  Moses, 
he  can  at  the  worst  be  understood  to  include  Moses  as  well  as 
Jesus  in  the  expression  "  the  people  of  Imran  ".^^  Adam, 
Noah,  Abraham  and  Jesus,  with  Moses  perhaps  included, — 
this  is  surely  a  list  that  shows  in  its  author  the  ability  to  con- 
struct a  sound  framework  for  his  philosophy  of  religious  his- 
tory. 

In  confirmation  of  this  conclusion  we  observe  that  it  is  pre- 
cisely these  figures  that  possess  the  chief  interest  for  Mo- 
hammed among  the  personages  of  the  past.  Joseph  and 
Solomon,  no  doubt,  are  dignified  by  considerable  space  in  the 
Koran  devoted  to  their  careers:  yet  these  are  not  treated  in 
the  same  way.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  precisely  those 
five  names  of  the  above  list,  that,  with  Mohammed's  name, 
make  up  for  Moslem  writers  the  series  of  the  innovating  or 
abrogating  apostles  of  God.  Among  the  very  numerous 
"  prophets "  of  history  there  have  been  some  hundreds  of 
"  apostles  " ;  and  among  these  latter,  Adam,  Noah,  Abraham, 
Moses,  Jesus  and  Mohammed  have  received  revelations  that 
mark  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the  progress  of  religion, 

''  vi.  30.    Imran  really  represents  Amram,  Ex.  vi.  20,  &c. 


438  SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 

by  substituting  for  the  revelation  that  sufficed  for  the  previous 
age  a  fuller  and  better  knowledge  of  God,  while  each  in  turn, 
save  the  last,  pointed  forward  to  that  better  revealer  who 
should  follow  him. 

This  ladder  of  revelation,  with  Mohammed  as  its  topmost 
rung,  is  at  the  same  time  the  only  history  of  redemption  that 
Mohammed  knows.  This  explains  what  is  otherwise  incompre- 
hensible,— why  these  apostles  of  God  can  be  called  bearers  of 
good  tidings  and  their  message  a  gospel. ^^  What  they  say  to 
their  contemporaries  is  a  condemnation  of  idolatry  and  im- 
morality: such  is  God's  message  through  them  to  their  age. 
Yet  the  fact  of  what  they  are — God's  representatives  and 
spokesmen — and  the  fact  of  the  message,  fearful  as  is  its  con- 
tent, constitute  them  evangelists.  If  this  seems  a  gloomy  con- 
ception of  divine  grace,  it  must  be  remembered  that  at  least  it 
is  consonant  with  the  general  tenor  of  Islam.  Prophecy  with- 
out the  Promise  is  no  more  of  a  travesty  of  the  Biblical  revela- 
tion, than  is  Salvation  without  Saviour  or  Holy  Spirit  a 
travesty  of  the  Biblical  redemption. 

Beside  these  great  epoch-making  apostles  of  history  there  is 
assumed  a  crowd  of  lesser  lights,  as  already  remarked,  each 
of  whom  is  sent  to  illumine  his  own  restricted  area  of  space 
and  time.  In  fact,  it  is  an  essential  part  of  this  Mohammedan 
conception  of  the  grace  of  God,  that  no  single  homogeneous 
portion  of  the  human  race  has  lacked  its  own  peculiar  spokes- 
man for  God.  This  is  reiterated  with  emphasis  in  the  Koran. 
So  for  example  Sura  xxxv,  verse  22 :  "  Verily  we  have  sent 
thee  with  the  truth  as  an  evangelist  and  a  wamer ;  and  there  is 
no  people  among  whom  there  has  not  been  a  warner."^^  The 
principle  on  which  mankind  is  distributed  into  these  chrono- 
logical and  geographical  divisions  for  the  purposes  of  revela- 
tion is  the  principle  of  language.  Just  as  Mohammed  insists 
that  the  perspicuity  of  his  Koran  for  all  men  of  Arabic 
sjjeech  has  an  accrediting  power  superior  to  any  hypothetical 
revelation  in  an  unknown,  ancient  or  heavenly  tongue,  so  also 
the  Koran  attributes  to  each  divine  messenger  a  perspicuous 

^  Bashir,  and  bushra. 

"Grimme  (Mohammed,  vol.  ii.  p.  76,  note  i)  compares  also  xiii.  8  and 
X.  48. 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN  439 

revelation,  so  that  his  contemporaries  who  speak  his  own 
language  may  understand  his  message,  and  be  "  without 
excuse  ".  Mohammed  regards  his  own  mission  as  the  antitype 
of  the  missions  of  all  his  predecessors,  as  where  he  makes  God 
say:  "(Thou  art)  mercy^^  from  thy  Lord,  to  warn  a  people 
unto  whom  before  thee  no  warner  has  come;  that  perchance 
they  may  be  admonished,  and,  when  misfortune  befalls  them 
for  what  their  hands  have  already  wrought,  they  may  not  say, 
'  O  our  Lord,  if  thou  hadst  sent  an  apostle  unto  us,  we  would 
have  followed  thy  revelations  and  come  to  be  of  the  number  of 
the  believers'  ".^^ 

The  attitude  of  the  individual  man  toward  this  general 
gracious  guidance  from  God  is  also  represented  as  decisive  for 
his  own  sharing  in  the  blessings  of  divine  grace.  "  Upon  them 
that  follow  my  direction  there  shall  come  no  fear,  neither 
shall  they  come  to  grief;  but  such  as  deny  and  dispute  our 
revelations,  these  shall  be  inmates  of  the  Fire, — they  shall 
abide  forever  therein."  ^^  This  would  seem  to  suggest  a 
classification  of  grace  into  "  common  grace  "  and  "  efficacious 
grace  ",  at  least  analogous  to  the  familiar  classification  of 
Christian  theology.  But  the  matter  is  not  so  simple  as  it  ap- 
pears. Whatever  may  be  averred  of  Moslem  theology,  it  is 
impossible  to  say  of  the  Koran,  still  more  of  these  portions  that 
we  are  considering,  that  Mohammed  ever  gives  a  decisive  and 
final  answer  to  the  question.  Does  the  ultimate  ground  of  sal- 
vation lie  in  God  or  in  man?  His  utterances  vary  with  his 
point  of  view  at  the  moment. 

The  Koran  has  its  Romans  ix.  18  in  Sura  xxix,  verse  20: 
"  He  punishes  whom  he  will,  and  upon  whom  he  will  he  has 
mercy."  It  has  its  Jno.  x.  28  in  Sura  xv,  verse  42,  where 
Allah  says  to  Iblis :  "  As  for  my  servants,  thou  shalt  have  no 
power  over  them,  but  only  over  him  that  follow^s  thee,  of  those 
who  are  seduced."  Yet  the  Koran  has  too  its  repeated  itera- 
tions of  the  principle  that  man's  faith  or  unbelief  in  God's 
revelation  is  the  decisive  element  in  salvation.  When  Mo- 
hammed asks  himself,  Whence  comes  this  faith?  he  does  not 

^  A  rahma,  that  is,  an  evidence  and  gift  of  the  divine  rahma. 
"  xxviii.  46  f .  "  ii.  36  f. 


440 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 


hesitate  to  answer,  From  God.  But  when  he  asks  again,  Why 
does  God  give  faith  to  this  one  and  withhold  it  from  that  one  ? 
he  answers,  Because  God  sees  that  this  one  possesses  and  that 
one  lacks  a  certain  disposition  toward  God's  revelation,  which 
he  terms  a  ''  turning  "  or  "  inclining  "  ^®  towards  God,  or, 
more  commonly,  a  '*  resignation  "  or  "  commitment  "  ^^  to 
God.  Indeed  the  latter  term,  islam,  has  given  its  name 
to  his  religion,  and  we  feel  that  when  we  have  reached  it  we 
must  have  reached  the  foundation-fact  in  Mohammedan  so- 
teriology. 

Yet  even  the  elephant  must  have  a  tortoise  on  which  to 
stand.  Once  more  the  question  rises,  Whence  comes  this 
favorable  disposition  toward  God  and  his  word?  and  again 
Mohammed  does  not  hesitate  to  reply.  From  God.  God  gives 
to  whom  he  pleases  that  disposition  which  determines  that  his 
guidance  shall  be  efficacious ;  and  conversely,  in  those  "  whom 
he  has  produced  for  Gehannem  ",  God  atrophies  the  organs 
for  apprehending  his  revelation,  "  that  they  may  not  under- 
stand it  ".^^  There  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  for  supposing 
that  this  chain  of  questions  and  answers  need  stop  just  here. 
Rather  we  feel  confident  that  if  Mohammed  were  to  be  asked. 
Why  then  does  God  thus  blind  and  deafen  these,  while  in- 
clining those  to  observe  and  hearken  ?  he  would  again  point  us 
to  some  subtle  differences  in  the  creatures  themselves,  yet 
would  acknowledge  that  those  differences  in  turn  could  only 
be  ascribed  to  God's  sovereign  act.  The  fact  is,  as  above 
stated,  that  his  attitude  towards  grace  and  merit  varies  with 
his  changing  point  of  view."*^ 

What  now,  finally,  is  the  nature  of  that  sin  in  man,  which 

'*naba,  ivth  stem.  ^  salama,  ivth   stem.        "vii.  178,  xvii,  48. 

"Every  attempt  to  formulate  Mohammed's  notion  of  the  relation  of 
individual  responsibility  to  original  sin,  of  a  universal  revelation  to  a 
limited  election,  must  reckon  with  the  view  adopted  in  Sura  vii,  171  f, 
— a  silly  rabbinical  fiction  designed  to  show  how  men  "  are  without  ex- 
cuse, because  that,  knowing  God,  they  glorified  him  not  as  God,  neither 
gave  thanks".  (Rom.  i.  20  f).  For  in  that  passage  Mohammed  makes 
God  say  to  him,  "  When  thy  Lord  took  from  the  sons  of  Adam  out  of 
their  backs  their  posterity,  and  made  them  testify  concerning  themselves, 
(saying)  'Am  I  not  your  Lord?'  they  said,  'Yea,  we  testify:'  lest  ye 
should  say  on  the  resurrection-day,  '  We  have  only  been  indifferent  about 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN  441 

at  once  necessitates  the  sending  of  these  "  warners  "  to  con- 
demn it,  and  finds  its  culmination  in  the  rejection  of  their 
ministry  ? 

A  writer  who  has  attempted  to  formulate  an  answer  to  this 
question*^  states  it  thus :  "  Man's  injustice  to  man  {adama) 
and  idolatry  (atgd)  are  the  names  of  those  by-paths  on  which 
ere  long  the  whole  race  came  to  walk ;  the  former  was  the  root, 
the  latter  the  fruit  that  it  produced."  For  proof  he  offers 
this  passage  in  evidence :  "  Verily  man  practises  idolatry, — 
because  he  sees  that  he  (by  injustice)  has  become  rich  ".^^ 
But  apart  from  the  question  of  whether  the  words  and  the 
idea  of  the  original  are  correctly  rendered  by  this  translation, 
it  is  doubtful  how  stringent  a  proof  it  affords  of  the  assertion 
that  injustice  is  the  root  and  idolatry  the  fruit.  For  whatever 
may  be  true  of  the  Koran  as  a  whole,^* — not  to  say,  of  Moslem 
theology, — the  impression  made  upon  the  reader  of  those  nar- 
ratives of  the  Koran  with  which  we  are  concerned,  is  rather 
that  if  either  one  or  the  other  is  fundamental,  it  is  the  sins 
against  religion  that  are  fundamental  and  the  offences  against 
ethical  standards  that  are  attributable  thereto.  Just  as  in  Ro- 
mans Paul  exhibits  the  ethical  consequences  of  religious  de- 
generation, instead  of  the  perverting  effect  of  unrighteousness 
upon  the  saving  knowledge  of  God,  so  also  in  these  portions 
of  the  Koran  which  represent  Mohammed's  philosophy  of  re- 
ligious history,  the  Arabian  prophet  gives  prominence  and  ap- 
parently causal  priority  to  the  sins  that  represent  perversions 
of  true  religion  rather  than  of  sound  ethics. 

In  the  catalogue  of  offences  against  God  charged  against  the 
men  of  the  Bible  to  whom  the  prophets  of  the  Bible  are  said 
to  have  brought  divine  reprehension  and  warning,  we  find  the 
following  specifications. 

this  matter,'  or  lest  ye  should  say,  '  Our  fathers  before  us  did  indeed  have 
other  gods,  and  we  are  their  offspring  after  them;  wilt  thou  then  destroy 
us  for  what  those  triflers  did?'" 

"Grimme,  op.  cit.,  p.  71.  *'xcvi.  6,  7. 

**  In  the  Koran,  however,  "  believe "  is  always  the  prius  of  "  perform 
good  works " ;  and  in  Moslem  theology  religion  as  tmdn,  "  faith ",  pre- 
cedes religion  as  dm,  "  religious  observance  "  (including  duties  to  both  God 
and  man). 


442  SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 

First,  the  great  sin  of  sins,  which  the  Koran  calls  shirk,  i.  e. 
"  association  "  or  "  partnership  "*^  the  attribution  to  other 
deities  of  the  glory  and  worship  belonging  of  right  to  Allah 
alone.  It  is  the  sin  that  is  the  antithetic  of  the  divine  jealousy. 
With  this  sin  are  charged  specifically  the  contemporaries  of 
Noah,  the  nation  of  Israel,  and  in  particular  the  Israelites  of 
Elijah's  day  in  worshipping  Baal.*^  Akin  to  this  in  the  mind' 
of  Mohammed  as  in  the  Decalogue  is  the  sin  of  idolatry  in  the' 
narrower,  etymological  sense  of  that  word.  The  worship  of 
images  is  especially  attributed  to  the  men  of  Abraham's  time 
and  family;  much  also  is  made  of  the  calf-worship  at  Sinai. 
The  word  gahiliyya,  "  ignorance ",  which  has  become  the 
technical  Moslem  term  for  the  pre-Mohammedan  era  in 
Arabia,  is  a  quality  ascribed  to  ancient  Israel  also,*''  and 
clearly  as  a  means  of  designating  their  petKhant  for  idolatry. 
The  figurative  equivalent  for  the  same  sinful  state  of  mind 
is  "  blindness  ".'*^  To  Abraham's  folk  is  even  attributed  the 
service  of  Satan;  the  former  terms  were  negative,  this  one  is 
positive,  and  finds  its  complement  in  the  attitude  towards 
God  that  these  servants  of  Satan  share  with  Satan  himself. 
The  same  pride,  the  same  "  denial  "  or  unbelief  and  ingratitude, 
and  the  same  malignity,  which  we  found  ascribed  to  Satan  in 
the  story  of  the  fall  are  all  explicitly  ascribed  to  these  sinners 
in  his  service,  notably  to  the  men  of  Noah's  age,  to  Pharaoh 
and  to  Israel. 

This  attitude  of  men  towards  God  determines  in  the  first 
place  their  attitude  towards  his  chalifa,  his  representative  sent 
to  them.  And  we  find  Mohammed  attributing  to  the  sinners 
of  the  Bible,  from  Noah's  day  to  Christ's,  not  only  jealousy 
and  disdain  of  their  apostles,  but  outspoken  accusations  against 
them,  accusations  of  lying,  sorcery  and  imposture,  with  in- 
solence and  mockery  of  them.  And,  worst  of  all,  like  the 
wicked  husbandmen  in  our  Lord's  parable  of  the  vineyard,  they 
are  charged  with  actual  persecution,  plotting,  and  full  intent 
to  murder.  It  is  contrary  to  Mohammed's  conviction  and 
policy  alike,  to  allow  that  one  of  these  representatives  of  God 

«  E.  g.  vi.  80  f ,  88,  &c. 

*•  xxxvii.  125.  "  vii.  134.  "  vii.  62. 


SIN  AND  GRACE  IN   THE   KORAN  443 

was  ever  actually  murdered;  God  always  steps  in  and,  being 
the  better  "strategist",  thwarts  their  plots,  disappoints  their 
rage,  and  vindicates  and  rescues  his  servant.^® 

The  climax,  then,  of  human  sin  against  a  God  whose  very 
warnings  are  mercies  and  whose  messengers  are  therefore 
evangelists,  is  only  reached  by  those  to  whom  have  already 
come  these  messages  and  who  have  turned  from  them.  In- 
difference or  neglect  is  the  least  flagrant  of  these  crimes  of 
lese-majeste.  Refusal  to  receive  the  gospel  is  for  Mohammed, 
as  for  Christ  himself,  the  supreme  indictment  against  those 
who  have  rejected  Christ's  message.^^  Other  and  more  overt 
manifestations  of  the  same  inward  state  of  heart — a  hard, 
perverse  or  impious  heart — are  covenant-breaking  and  gain- 
saying; and  finally, — depth  of  human  depravity! — a  blatant 
bravado,  such  as  that  of  Pharaoh,  who  would  himself  mount 
up  to  the  God  of  Moses,  or  that  of  the  enemies  of  Noah,  who 
said  of  the  threatened  flood,  "  Bring  upon  us  that  wherewith 
thou  art  threatening  us,  if  thou  ait  speaking  the  truth !"^^ 

Turning  now  to  transgressions  of  the  moral  law  imposed  on 
his  creatures  by  him  who,  according  to  Mohammed  as  ac- 
cording to  the  Scriptures,  requires  men  both  "  to  believe  and  to 
perform  good  works  ",  we  find  the  following  sins  charged 
against  those  to  whom  the  ancient  apostles  of  God  brought 
their  warnings. 

Murder,  which  began  with  Cain,  is  to  be  imputed  to  such 
as  have  the  inward  intent  as  well  as  those  who  do  the  actual 
deed.  And  even  when  Moses  kills  the  Egyptian  to  help  his 
Hebrew  kinsman,  Mohammed  feels  it  necessary  to  attribute 
to  Moses  the  intention  merely  to  strike  and  not  to  kill,  but  to 
Satan  the  fatal  result  of  the  blow;  even  so  Moses  must  be 
represented  as  acknowledging  immediately  the  wrong  he  has 


*•  Mohammed's  adoption  of  the  Docetic  expedient  of  rescuing  Jesus  from 
an  actual  death  upon  the  cross  is  well  known;  it  is  in  connection  with 
his  exposition  of  this  view  that  he  uses  the  remarkable  language  re- 
ferred to  in  the  text:  Sura  iii.  47,  "They  (the  Jews)  played  a  trick  (upon 
Jesus),  and  Allah  played  a  trick;  and  Allah — he  is  the  best  of  tricksters." 

^  a.  Jno.  XV.  22,  xvi.  9,  with  Sura  v.  115. 


444  SIN  AND  GRACE  IN  THE  KORAN 

thereby  done  to  his  own  soul  and  craving  the  divine  forgive- 
ness.'^^ 

Offences  against  chastity  are  particularly  associated  in  these 
narratives  with  the  stories  of  Lot  and  of  Joseph.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  not  only  the  grosser  forms  of  this  sin  are  con- 
demned, but  even  those  violations  of  the  divine  law  which  are 
inward  and  latent,  quite  in  the  spirit  of  Matthew  v.  28;  for 
after  Joseph  has  been  cleared  of  all  suspicion  through  the  con- 
fession of  his  mistress,  he  adds :  "  I  do  not  wholly  clear  my- 
self; verily  the,  soul  is  imperious  in  demgtnding  what  is  foul, 
unless  my  Lord  grant  grace."  ^^ 

Theft  is  of  course  reprehended;  but  also  injustice,  oppres- 
sion, threats,  persecution,  and  even  the  greed  that  begets  these. 

Just  as  that  counterpart  of  the  Decalogue  in  Sura  xvii.*^* 
includes  among  the  prohibitions  given  at  Sinai  a  further  com- 
mand to  "  perform  the  covenant ;  verily  the  covenant  is  an  ob- 
ject of  (divine)  inquisition  ",^^  so  also  we  find  the  sins  of 
faithlessness  and  ingratitude  among  the  sins  specified  as  having 
brought  down  the  just  judgment  of  God  ufKDn  those  who  of 
old  were  guilty  of  them.  And  other  phases  also  of  man's 
failure  in  his  duty  to  man  that  might  easily  be  passed  over  by 
even  a  strict  moralist  are  not  forgotten,  in  the  sketching  of 
these  classical  examples  for  the  world  of  Islam  of  human 
wickedness  and  its  repudiation  by  God:  namely,  pride,  inso- 
lence, contempt,  scorn,  and — a  right  Puritan  touch ! — "  light 
behaviour  ".^^ 

Such  an  inquiry  as  the  one  we  have  thus  pursued  naturally 
suggests  the  methodical  treatment  of  all  the  other  subjects 
which,  like  sin  and  grace,  are  handled  in  this  material  common 
to  Bible  and  Koran.  The  mutual  relations  of  God  and  the 
believer  and  of  God  and  the  apostle,  the  ideal  of  the  ancient 
"  Moslem  ", — for  in  spite  of  Mohammed's  repeated  claim  to 
the  title  of  the  "  first  Moslem  ",  he  represents  Islam  as  older 

"xxviii.  14  f.  "^xii.  53. 

"Verses  23-39;  in  shorter  form  also  in  Sura  vi.  152  f. 
"Verse  36. 
"xliii.  54,  of  Pharaoh  and  his  people. 


SIN  AND   GRACE  IN   THE  KORAN  445 

than  Israel,  as  old  as  the  race, — worship,  prayer,  providence, 
theophany  and  angelic  mediation; — all  these  themes  might 
well  furnish  the  basis  for  further  comparison  of  this  interest- 
ing material  common  to  the  sacred  books  of  three  religions. 
Such  comparison  can  only  aid  in  our  comprehension  of  both 
the  power  and  the  limitations  of  the  Koran  and  of  that  strange 
person  who  produced  it. 


THE  FINALITY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
RELIGION 

Caspar  Wistar  Hodge,  Jr. 


I. — Nature  and  Importance  of  the  question, 

II. — The    nature    of    Christianity    and    what    is    meant    by    the    term 
"finality "'as  applied  to  Christianity. 

III. — Finality  of  Christianity  ultimately  dependent  upon  the  supernatural 
character  and  claims  of  Christianity. 

IV. — Statement  and  Criticism  of  the  various  attempts  to  vindicate  the 
finality  of  the  Christian  Religion. 

a)  The  Hegelian,  b)  The  Ritschlian,  as  represented  by  Kaftan, 
Wobbermin,  and  Traub.  c)  The  "experiential  school"  as  repre- 
sented by  Ihmels  and  Hunzinger. 
V. — Statement  and  Criticism  of  the  position  of  Troeltsch  representing 
the  school  of  Comparative  Religion,  and  denying  the  finality  of 
Christianity  over  against  the  Ritschlian  theologians. 

VI. — Concluding  statement  showing  that  the  finality  of  Christianity 
depends  on  the  supernatural  character  of  Christianity,  especially 
of  the  Christian  Revelation;  that  this  depends  on  a  truly  super- 
naturalistic  view  of  God's  relation  to  the  world;  that  this  is 
possible  upon  a  truly  theistic  world-view;  and  that  the  denial  of 
the  possibility  of  the  supernaturalism  of  New  Testament  Chris- 
tianity must  ultimately  rest  upon  an  anti-theistic  philosophy. 


THE  FINALITY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
RELIGION 

The  continued  and  sustained  interest  in  the  question  of  the 
finaHty  or  "  absoluteness  "  of  the  Christian  Religion  is  shown 
by  the  recent  renewed  discussion  of  the  subject  by  Professors 
Hunzinger  of  Erlangen,  and  Ihmels  of  Leipzig,^  carrying  on 
the  well  known  controversy  in  the  Zeitschrift  fur  Theologie 
und  Kirche  between  Troeltsch  on  the  one  side  and  Kaftan, 
Wobbermin,  Reischle,  and  Traub  on  the  other. ^  The  contin- 
ued interest  and  renewed  discussion  of  this  subject,  however, 
is  not  surprising  when  once  we  realize  that  it  is  not  a  new 
problem,  but  one  that  is  as  old  as  Christianity,  and  that  the 
question  raised  is  an  absolutely  vital  one  for  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. 

The  interest  which  Christianity  has  in  this  question  is  both 
scientific  and  religious.  As  regards  the  former,  the  truth  of 
the  Christian  religion  is  involved  in  the  question  of  its  finality. 
We  shall  see  that  this  claim  is  essential  to  Christianity,  and 
that  it  is  really  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion  which  is 
involved  in  the  discussion.  Modern  historical  investigation 
is  being  applied  to  the  sphere  of  religion  and  especially  to  the 
question  of  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  the  other  religions, 
and  the  question  necessarily  arises  whether  Christianity  is 
historically  conditioned  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  only  of  relative 
value,  or  whether  it  is,  as  it  claims  to  be,  the  one  final  religion. 

^  Hunzinger,  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums,  Prohleme  und  Aufgaben 
der  gegenwdrtigen  systematischen  Theologie,  1909,  pp.  63-88;  Ihmels,  Das 
Christentum,  sein  Wesen  und  seine  Absolutheit,  Centralfragen  der  Dog- 
matik  in  der  Gegenwart,  1911,  PP.  31-54- 

^Troeltsch,  Die  Selbstandigkeit  der  Religion,  Zeitschrift  fiir  Theologie 
und  Kirche,  V.  1895,  pp.  361  sq.,  VI.  1896,  pp.  71  sq.,  167  sq.,  VIII.  1898, 
Geschichte  und  Metaphysik,  pp.  i  sq. ;  Kaftan,  Die  Selbstandigkeit  des 
Christentums,  ibid.  VI.  pp.  373  sq. ;  Erwiederung,  i.  Die  Methode;  2.  der 


450 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


The  interest  which  Christianity  has  in  this  question  is  also 
deeply  religious  and  practical.  This  can  be  seen  in  a  twofold 
way.  The  type  of  religious  consciousness  and  life  represented 
by  Christianity  is  closely  related  to  this  question.  Whoever 
thinks  that  there  is  in  the  natural  man  a  power  to  save  himself 
if  only  he  have  instruction  or  incentive,  and  whoever  therefore 
sees  in  Jesus  only  a  human  teacher  of  the  love  of  God,  will  not 
be  able  to  see  in  him  the  only  Saviour,  and  hence  will  not  be 
able  to  regard  Christianity  as  in  a  true  sense  the  only  and 
final  religion.  On  the  other  hand,  whoever  recognizes  in  the 
natural  and  sinful  man  no  power  of  self-salvation,  will  be  in 
a  position  to  see  in  Christ  the  only  Saviour  of  man  and  the 
object  of  religious  faith.  And  not  only  is  this  a  question  thus 
closely  related  to  religious  life,  the  way  in  which  it  is  answered 
will  likewise  have  a  far  reaching  effect  on  the  nature  and 
value  of  foreign  missions,  as  can  be  clearly  seen  from  the  re- 
cent discussions  on  this  subject.^ 

Before  discussing  the  finality  of  Christianity,  it  is  necessary 
to  state  as  briefly  as  possible  what  is  meant  by  Christianity  and 
what  is  meant  by  the  term  "  finality  "  as  applied  to  the  Chris- 
tian religion. 

The  question.  What  is  Christianity?  is  a  historical  one.  It 
is,  accordingly,  absolutely  essential  to  answer  this  question  in  a 

Supernaturalismus,  ibid.,  1898,  pp.  70  sq.  (a  reply  to  Troeltsch's  Article  on 
History  and  Metaphysics)  ;  Wobbermin,  Das  Verhaltnis  der  Theologie 
zur  modemen  Wissenschaft  und  ihre  Stellung  im  Gesamtmtrahmen  der 
Wissenschaften,  ZTuK.  pp.  375  sq. ;  Traub,  Die  religionsgeschichtliche 
Methode  und  die  systematische  Theologie,  ibid.,  XL  1901,  pp.  301  sq. ; 
Reischle,  Hisitorische  und  dogmatische  Methode  der  Theologie,  Theolo- 
gische  Rundschau,  IV.  261  sq.,  305  sq.  Troeltsch  replied  by  developing 
more  fully  his  views  in  his  work  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums  und 
die  Religionsgeschichte  1902.  For  a  comparison  of  the  views  of  Troeltsch 
and  Kaftan  vid.  Niebergall,  Ueber  die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums, 
Theologische  Arbeiten  aus  dent  Rheinischen  Wissenschaftlichen  Prediger- 
Verevfu,  N.  F.  Heft  4,  1900,  pp.  46-86;  to  which  Troeltsch  replied  in  an 
Article  Ueber  historische  und  dogmatische  Methode  der  Theologie,  ibid., 
pp.  87-108. 

^  Christliche  Welt,  1904,  Nr.  52,  1906,  Nrs.  1-3,  for  the  discussion  of  Mis- 
sions between  Troeltsch,  from  the  standpoint  which  denies  the  finality  of 
Christianity,  and  his  opponents.  Cf.  also  von  Walter,  Die  Absolutheit  des 
Christentums  und  die  Mission,  Neue  Kirchliche  Zeitschrift,  1906,  pp.  817  sq. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  451 

historical  way,  and  to  keep  it  entirely  distinct  from  the  question 
as  to  the  truth  and  finality  of  Christianity.  Moreover  the 
identification  of  Christianity  with  primitive  Christianity,  i.  e. 
the  Christianity  of  Christ  and  his  Apostles,  though  it  may 
ultimately  depend  upon  the  apologetic  and  dogmatic  basis  of 
their  authority,  yet  quite  apart  from  the  settlement  of  the 
authority  of  Christ  and  his  Apostles  as  teachers,  does  not 
depend  upon  any  dogmatic  judgment,  but  follows  from  the 
historical  character  of  the  Christian  religion.  In  emphasiz- 
ing this  point  Wendt*  is  right  against  such  a  view  as  that 
of  Foster^  who  asserts  that  the  question  of  the  nature  of 
Christianity  is  not  a  historical  one,  but  that  we  have  to  "  con- 
struct "  Christianity,  and  that  in  doing  this  the  constructive 
imagination  plays  a  part.  The  issue  involved  in  this  question 
is  not  between  "  primitive  Christianity  "  and  some  supposedly 
higher  form  of  the  Christian  religion,  but  between  Christianity 
and  the  natural  religious  sentiment  of  man.  When,  for  ex- 
ample, Foster^  says  that  Jesus  held  the  popular  and  erroneous 
view  of  the  world,  of  miracles,  of  angels ;  that  even  his  ethical 
v^iews  are  temporally  conditioned  and  not  universally  valid; 
in  a  word,  that  "what  the  Gospel  that  saves  requires  is  that 
I  confess,  not  Jesus'  confession,  but  my  own — with  Jesus- 
like pains,  courage,  sincerity,  and  in  the  use  of  all  the  means 
at  my  disposal  '\'^  it  is  quite  evident  that  the  "  Gospel  "  as 
conceived  by  Foster  is  not  Christianity,  but  the  ethical  spirit 
which  we  all  naturally  approve  and  which  w^as  manifested  by 
Jesus.  There  is  no  justification  whatever  for  the  identifica- 
tion of  Christianity  with  the  natural  moral  or  religious  senti- 
ment of  man. 

Approaching  the  question  historically  and  putting  the  mat- 
ter in  a  few  words,  Christianity  involves  the  idea  of  a  divine 
Saviour  from  sin.  Christianity,  therefore,  as  Drews  has  said 
in  his  Christusmythe,  originated  in  the  idea  of  a  God  who  has 
become  man;  not  in  the  idea  of  a  man  who  was  deified  in 
the  thought  of  his  first  disciples.     Whether,  with  Drews,  we 

*Wendt,  System  der  Christlichen  Lehre,  1906,  pp.  23-25. 

°  G.  B.  Foster,  The  Finality  of  the  Christian  Religion^  1909,  pp.  279  sq. 

•Foster,  op.  cit.,  pp.  407  sq. 

'  Foster,  op,  cit.,  p.  418. 


452 


FINALITY   OF  CHRISTIANITY 


hold  this  to  be  a  myth  or  whether  with  Paul  we  believe  in 
this  "  mystery  of  godliness  ",  this  is  the  only  Christ  and 
the  only  Christianity  that  we  can  discover.  It  is,  as  such  men 
as  Kalthoff,  Drews  and  von  Schnehen  have  shown  over  against 
the  modem  liberal  Jesus-theologians,  not  only  the  Christ  of 
Paul  and  John,  not  only  the  Christ  of  our  Synoptic  Gospels, 
but  the  Christ  and  the  Christianity  of  the  sources  which  are' 
supposed  to  underlie  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  The  attempt  to 
get  behind  the  earliest  sources  and  to  separate  the  so  called 
historical  Jesus  from  the  Christ  of  faith,  rests  upon  such  arbi- 
trary and  subjective  methods  of  criticism  as  to  be  without 
historical  and  scientific  validity  or  justification,  and  to  leave 
us  without  basis  for  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  human 
Jesus  of  the  liberal  theology.  Furthermore  this  divine  Christ, 
according  to  Christianity,  is  the  Saviour  of  sinners.  Jesus  is, 
therefore,  not  only  according  to  the  Apostolic  teaching,  but 
according  to  his  own  (Mt.  xi.  25-30;  Lk.  x.  21,  22),  the  only 
Revealer  of  God  and  the  only  Mediator  between  God  and  men. 
In  a  word,  he  is  not  simply  the  first  and  greatest  example  of 
saving  faith,  but  its  object. 

In  consequence  of  this,  "  finality  "  belongs  to  the  essence  of 
Christianity.  If  we  start  from  the  presupposition  that  man 
is,  in  his  present  state  and  by  means  of  his  own  native  powers, 
capable  of  attaining  perfection  and  peace  and  fellowship  with 
God;  that  he  needs  no  new  birth  and  no  Saviour;  then  all 
that  he  needs  is  instruction  and  moral  incentive.  And  man 
can  derive  this  from  other  sources  as  well  as  from  Jesus. 
Having  thus  started  out  from  the  presuppositions  of  the 
rationalistic  and  naturalistic  Illumination,  we  have  precluded 
the  possibility  of  recognizing  any  "  finality  "  in  Christianity ; 
for  the  very  reason  that  our  presuppositions  are  the  opposite 
of  those  of  Christianity.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  con- 
vinced that  man  is  fallen  and  incapable  of  saving  himself  or 
of  attaining  communion  with  God,  then  we  are  able  to  see 
Jesus  as  he  is  portrayed  in  the  Gospel  as  the  Saviour  from  sin. 
And  since  fellowship  with  God  is  attainable  only  through  this 
salvation,  the  finality  of  Christianity  follows  from  the  idea  of 
the  Mediatorship  of  Christ,  and  thus  is  seen  to  belong  to  the 
essence  of  the  Christian  religion.     Von  Walter  is  right  in 


FINALITY   OF  CHRISTIANITY  453 

affirming  that  we  can  really  be  Christians  only  by  asserting  the 
''  absoluteness  "  of  Christianity,^  by  which  statement  he  means 
simply  that  it  is  not  only  essential  to  historical  Christianity, 
but  is  also  an  essential  element  in  the  Christian  consciousness. 
In  view  of  what  has  been  said,  we  can  state  very  briefly 
what  is  meant  by  ascribing  '*  finality  "  or  "  absoluteness  "  to 
Christianity.  It  is  not  intended  in  the  Hegelian  sense  which 
would  regard  Christianity  as  the  culmination  of  the  process 
by  which  God  is  realizing  himself  in  the  world  and  history,  so 
that  it  is  '  absolute  '  as  the  final  form  of  God's  self-conscious- 
ness. Nor  does  it  mean  that  in  Christ  the  idea  of  the  essen- 
tial unity  of  God  and  man  is  fully  realized.  Nor  does  it  mean 
that  in  the  Christian  revelation  we  have  an  exhaustive  and 
fully  adequate  knowledge  of  God.  Neither  does  it  signify 
that  the  fellowship  with  God  which  the  Christian  has  in  Christ 
is  incapable  of  growth  and  of  a  higher  realization  in  the  future 
life.  When  finality  is  predicated  of  Christianity,  it  is  intended 
that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  only  revealer  of  God  because  he  has 
such  an  exhaustive  and  adequate  knowledge  of  God,  and  it  is 
intended  that  though  the  Christian's  communion  with  God  is 
capable  of  a  future  perfection,  the  eternal  life  which  is  thus 
to  be  completed  is  absolutely  bound  to  Jesus  Christ  and  his 
saving  work.  The  three  ideas  which  seem  to  be  implied  in 
the  term  "  finality "  when  applied  to  Christianity  are,  ab- 
stractly put,  first  that  the  Christian  religion  as  the  product  of  a 
special  supernatural  revelation  is  independent  of  and  unde- 
rivable  from  other  religions ;  secondly,  that  it  is  unsurpassable 
i.  e.  that  no  more  perfect  religion  will  be  attained  by  any 
conceivable  evolution  of  religion;  and  thirdly,  that  it  is  ex- 
clusive. This  last  idea  does  not  mean  that  other  religions 
contain  no  truth,  but  that  since  Christ  is  the  only  Saviour, 
Christianity  is  the  only  religion  in  which  we  can  truly  find 
cominunion  with  God.  Applying  these  ideas  to  Christianity, 
it  is  at  once  clear  that  the  finality  of  Christianity  is  essentially 
bound  up  with  the  distinctively  supernatural  character  of  the 
Christian  religion.  It  claims  in  contradistinction  to  other  re- 
ligions, an  exclusive  supernaturalism.     Its  revelation  claims  to 

*  von  Walter,  op.  cit.,  p.  824. 


454 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


be  supernatural  in  this  distinctive  sense.  While  Christianity 
does  not  deny  that  God  has  revealed  himself  outside  of  its 
sphere,  it  nevertheless  maintains  that  in  Christianity  God  has 
directly  communicated  to  man,  in  a  supernatural  manner,  truth 
concerning  himself.  This  is  quite  different  from  the  pantheiz- 
ing  idea  which  obliterates  the  distinction  between  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural  in  this  high  sense,  and  which  asserts  that 
all  revelation  is  supernatural  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 
source  in  God,  and  that  all  revelation  is  natural  from  the 
standpoint  of  its  mode  of  occurrence.  According  to  this  latter 
view  there  can  be  nothing  distinctive  about  the  Christian  reve- 
lation which  distinguishes  its  revelation  from  that  in  other  re- 
ligions. In  contradistinction  to  this  view  Christianity  claims 
that,  while  all  other  religions  are  products  of  man's  natural 
religious  consciousness  in  direct  contact  with  God,  as  Troeltsch 
asserts,  in  the  Christian  revelation  God  has  directly  spoken 
to  man,  giving  him  the  final  and  authoritative  interpretation 
of  the  great  supernatural  facts  of  the  Christian  religion. 
Christianity,  moreover,  claims  finality  because  in  the  historical 
person  and  work  of  Christ,  it  has  an  exclusive  and  unsur- 
passable, because  supernatural,  Redeemer  and  redemption.  It 
does  not  assert  merely  that  Christ  is  the  perfect  revealer  of 
God ;  it  claims  that  he  is  the  only  Mediator  between  God  and 
man,  and  that  fellowship  with  God  and  eternal  life  are  forever 
indissolubly  connected  with  his  person  and  work.  Here  again 
the  finality  of  Christianity  rests  upon  its  supernatural  charac- 
ter. It  is,  as  was  said,  because  of  the  inability  of  man  to  save 
himself,  that  this  direct  intervention  of  God  for  man's  salva- 
tion is  the  only  and  final  way  by  which  he  can  have  fellow- 
ship with  God.  This  is  not  only  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles 
(Acts  iv.  12;  I  Cor.  iii.  11 ;  i  Tim.  ii.  5)  ;  it  is  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  himself  (Mt.  xi.  25  sq).  It  is  thus  that  finality  is  of 
the  essence  of  Christianity,  and  any  abatement  of  the  claim 
of  finality  for  Christianity  is  a  denial  of  the  exclusive  Media- 
torship  of  Christ.^ 

When  we  inquire  into  the  presuppositions  and  grounds  of 
this  view,  and  ask  whether  it  is  still  to  be  maintained,  it  is 

•Cf.  Hunzinger,  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums,  Probleme  usw.  p.  74. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  455 

evident  at  once  that  a  definite  world-view,  i.  e.  a  definite  con- 
ception of  God  and  his  relation  to  the  world,  underlies  this 
idea  of  the  finality  of  Christianity.  It  is  the  high  supernatural- 
ism  which  is  characteristic  of  the  Scripture  doctrine  of  God 
and  which  is  based  upon  a  thoroughly  consistent  theism.  It  is 
the  idea  of  God  as  an  extramundane  and  infinite  Person,  in- 
finitely exalted  above  the  works  of  his  hands,  who  preserves 
the  universe  and  governs  it  in  accordance  with  his  will.  This 
infinitely  transcendent  God,  therefore,  acts  not  only  through 
and  by  second  causes  i.  e.  in  his  providential  control  of  all 
things,  but  also  is  free  to  act  directly  upon  or  in  the  universe 
without  and  apart  from  the  action  of  second  causes.  In  other 
words,  this  view  of  God  asserts  the  possibility  of  two  differ- 
ent kinds  or  modes  of  activity  in  God,  one  through  and  con- 
curring with  natural  causes,  and  one  independent  of  these  and 
immediate.  This  world-view,  accordingly,  asserts  the  possi- 
bility of  events  in  the  world  of  psychic  life  and  in  the  world 
of  external  Nature  which  are  due  to  the  immediate  efficiency 
of  God.  This  view  is  called  "  dualistic  "  by  its  opponents. 
It  is  dualistic  in  the  sense  that  God  is  not  identified  with  the 
world,  that  some  efficiency  in  second  causes  is  recognized,  and 
that  in  addition  to  God's  providential  action,  his  capacity  for 
this  directly  supernatural  mode  of  activity  is  asserted.  It  is 
not  "  dualistic  ",  however,  in  any  naive  or  "  mechanical  "  sense. 
Such  a  naively  dualistic  view  is  illustrated  by  a  passage  from 
Herodotus  which  Dr.  McCosh  has  cited  in  his  work  The  Su- 
pernatural in  Relation  to  the  Natural. ^^  According  to  this 
view  the  action  of  God  is  recognized  only  in  events  which 
supposedly  interrupt  the  course  of  Nature.  Thus  the  Egyp- 
tians told  Herodotus  that,  since  their  fields  were  watered  by 
the  Nile,  they  were  less  dependent  upon  their  God  than  the 
Greeks,  whose  lands  were  watered  by  showers  which  they 
thought  were  sent  directly  by  Jupiter.  This  view  sees  God 
only  in  events  which  are  inexplicable  by  natural  causes.  It 
therefore  loses  God  in  so  far  as  science  traces  one  series  of 
events  after  another  to  their  proximate  natural  causes.    Hence 

"Herodotus,  ii.  13;  cf.  McCosh,  The  Supernatural  in  Relation  to  the 
Natural,  1862,  p.  8. 


4S6 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


the  progress  of  scientific  knowledge  becomes  a  progressive 
banishment  of  God  from  the  world,  the  goal  of  such  a  process 
being  atheism.  In  reaction  from  this  mechanical  and  deistic 
conception,  the  recognition  of  God's  providential  control  in  all 
events  has  led  so  far  in  the  opposite  direction  as  to  result  in 
the  denial  of  any  action  of  God  apart  from  his  providential  con- 
trol through  second  causes. 

This  denial  of  direct  supematuralism  is  not  only  seen  in 
pantheism  which  denies  any  efficiency  to  second  causes,  it  is 
seen  also  in  theistic  writers  who  recognize,  both  the  efficiency 
of  second  causes  and  God's  providential  control  of  them.  Such 
writers  are  accustomed  to  identify  the  high  supematuralism 
we  have  described  with  the  naive  and  mechanical  view,  and 
hence  to  pronounce  it  "  unscientific  "  and  directly  opposed  to 
the  "  modern  consciousness ".  Some  of  these  theologians, 
moreover,  assert  that  their  view  of  the  world  is  supernatural- 
istic,  so  that  it  becomes  necessary  to  have  a  clear  understand- 
ing of  the  differences  in  the  use  of  the  terms  supernatural  and 
natural.  Thus  "  naturalism  "  is  often  used  to  denote  either 
materialism  which  seeks  to  derive  all  mental  phenomena  from 
matter  and  force,  or  the  view  which  asserts  that  the  mathe- 
matico-mechanical  explanation  of  the  universe  is  the  ultimate 
one.  It  is  this  latter  view  which  Ward  opposes  in  his  Natur- 
alism and  Agnosticism}'^  Over  against  such  forms  of  natural- 
ism, an  idealistic  pantheism  might  be  called  supematuralistic 
in  asserting  a  reality  other  than  physical  nature.  Others 
would  call  any  pantheistic  view  "  naturalistic  "  because  it  re- 
cognizes no  God  above  and  distinct  from  Nature.  Hence  the 
recognition  of  the  transcendence  of  God,  of  his  providence,  of 
teleology  and  of  ethical  and  religious  values  is  sometimes 
called  supematuralism  and  usually  regarded  as  anti-naturalis- 
tic. Such  a  view  recognizes  the  transcendence  of  God,  but 
only  his  immanent  and  providential  mode  of  action.  Such, 
for  example,  is  the  view  of  Troeltsch  who  asserts  what  he 
calls  a  direct  action  of  God  on  the  human  heart  in  all  re- 
ligions, but  who  clearly  distinguishes  his  view  from  the  direct 
supematuralism  of  the  older  evangelical  theology,  and  Who 

"James  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism?  1903. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  457 

recognizes  fully  that  it  is  just  this  high  supernaturalism  alone 
which  can  justify  the  idea  of  the  finality  of  Christianity.^^ 
Such  also  is  the  view  of  Pfleiderer  who  believes  in  the  super- 
natural basis  of  the  world,  i.  e.  God ;  in  a  supernatural  govern- 
ment of  the  world,  i.  e.  divine  providence ;  in  a  revelation  which 
is  supernatural  simply  as  coming  from  God,  but  which  is  only 
the  natural  development  of  the  religious  nature  of  man;  and 
yet  will  not  admit  anything  miraculous  or  supernatural  in  the 
sense  which  implies  an  immediate  activity  of  God  apart  from 
second  causes. ^^  Foster's  view  is  essentially  the  same,  though 
his  terminology  is  slightly  different.  He  would  not  call  his 
view  of  the  world  either  naturalism  or  supernaturalism.  The 
former  he  identifies  with  the  assertion  that  the  mechanical 
causal  explanation  of  the  world  is  final;  the  latter  with  im- 
mediate or  direct  supernaturalism.  Both  these  views  he  ex- 
plicitly rejects.  He  says  that  we  may  not  suppose  that  there 
is  a  "  twofold  activity  of  God,  a  natural  and  a  supernatural  " ; 
and  that  there  is  nothing  which  happens  which  is  not  in  ac- 
cordance with  natural  law.^^  Here,  then,  are  views  which 
their  authors  call  anti-naturalistic,  but  which  definitely  and  con- 
sciously oppose  the  high  supernaturalism  of  the  Christianity  of 
the  New  Testament  and  the  whole  Scripture  idea  of  God ;  and 
which  recognize  in  this  high  supernaturalism  a  view  of  the 
world  diametrically  opposite  to  their  own. 

Accordingly  the  view  of  God  and  the  world  which  under- 
lies the  claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  final  religion  is  not 
merely  in  contradiction  to  "  naturalism  "  in  the  philosophical 
sense  of  the  term,  but  also  to  the  "  anti-supematuralism  "  just 
described. 

^^Troeltsch,  Ueber  historische  u.  dogmatische  Methode  usw.  in  Theo- 
logische  Arbeiten  aus  dem  Rheinischen  wissenschaftlichen  Prediger-Verein, 
N.  F.  Heft  4,  p.  100. 

^'  Pfleiderer,  The  Philosophy  and  Development  of  Religion,  Gifford  Lec- 
tures, 1894;  and  for  his  denial  of  direct  supernaturalism  vid.  his  Essay 
entitled  Evolution  and  Theology,  in  Evolution  and  Theology  and  Other 
Essays,  1900,  p.  1-26.  For  a  criticism  of  Pfleiderer,  cf.  James  Orr,  Can 
Prof.  Pfleiderer's  View  Justify  Itself,  The  Supernatural  in  Christianity, 
1894,  pp.  35-67. 

"Foster,  op.  cit.,  p.  132. 


458  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

This  high  supernaturalism  was  rejected  through  the  in- 
fluence of  the  EngHsh  Deism  of  the  i8th  Century  and  the 
illumination  rationalism  in  Germany.  The  reaction  more- 
over from  the  naive  dualism  of  deistic  types  of  thought  led  to 
an  overemphasis  of  the  immanence  of  God  which  also  con- 
tributed to  the  rejection  of  this  supernaturalism.  This  hav- 
ing taken  place,  it  became  no  longer  possible  to  distinguish  the 
natural  and  the  supernatural  in  this  way,  and  the  supernatural 
is  reduced,  as  we  have  just  seen,  to  the  spiritual  in  contrast  to 
the  material,  or  the  doctrine  of  Providence  over  against  deism 
and  pantheism,  or  teleology  as  against  mechanical  causation. 

But  the  so-called  principle  of  a  wholly  "  immanent  caus^ 
ality  "  which  lies  at  the  root  of  the  abandonment  of  the  Scrip- 
tural supernaturalism,  necessarily  and  logically  gives  rise  to 
the  thoroughgoing  type  of  Naturalism  which  will  explain  the 
entire  universe  by  causes  wholly  immanent  or  within  the  de- 
veloping series  of  second  causes.  It  is  this  "  naturalistic  " 
philosophy  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  what  is  called  "  historical 
relativism  ".  This  philosophy  applies  the  idea  of  evolution 
through  wholly  immanent  causes  to  the  sphere  of  history  as 
well  as  to  that  of  Nature.  Everything  is  in  a  continuous  state 
of  change  or  "  becoming ",  and  between  all  phenomena  in 
Nature  and  history  there  is  a  genetic  connection  of  a  purely 
mechanical  character.  Hence  there  can  be  no  absolute  values 
of  any  kind  in  history,  and  no  norms  whether  of  truth,  re- 
ligion, or  ethics.  Since,  therefore,  everything  in  history  is 
thus  reducible  to  lower  terms  and  likely  to  be  surpassed  in  the 
process  of  evolution,  and  since  Christianity  is  a  historical  phe- 
nomenon, it  too,  it  would  seem,  must  be  of  only  relative  and 
temporal  significance  and  value.  The  finality  of  Christianity 
would  appear  to  be  lost. 

It  was  out  of  this  situation  that  the  main  attempts  to  vindi- 
cate the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion  arose.  All  of  these 
attempts,  generally  speaking,  have  two  things  in  common. 
They  all  point  out  the  limitations  and  errors  of  thorough  going 
naturalism,  and  they  all  abandon  the  high  supernaturalism 
which  we  have  seen  to  be  inseparably  connected  with  the 
Christianity  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  first  of  these  attempts  may  be  loosely  designated  as  the 


FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  459 

Hegelian.  This  view  will  abandon  to  the  sphere  of  relativity 
the  entire  historical  element  in  Christianity,  maintaining  the 
finality  of  the  "  religious  consciousness  "  which  is  expressed 
in  these  historically  conditioned  forms.  This  religious  con- 
sciousness and  its  ideas  are  absolute  and  final  because  they  rea- 
lize the  ideal  of  religion  as  the  unity  of  God  and  man.  Hence 
the  evolution  of  religion  reaches  its  climax  in  Christianity. 
The  determining  idea  of  this  view,  however,  is  not  so  much 
that  of  an  evolution  toward  a  goal,  as  it  is  the  old  rationalistic 
one  of  the  distinction  between  the  "  kernel  "  and  the  "  husk  " 
in  Christianity,  the  historical  element  being  relegated  to  the 
latter  category.  The  way  for  this  was  prepared  by  Lessing 
and  Kant.  The  difficulty  which  was  felt  in  regard  to  historical 
facts  was  not  the  modern  one  of  attaining  certitude  of  belief. 
The  most  undisputed  fact,  it  was  held,  could  neither  support 
nor  form  the  content  of  religious  belief.  Hence  all  positive 
religions  were  regarded  as  but  the  outward  expression  of  the 
pure  religion  of  reason.  Lessing  expressed  this  in  his  famous 
utterance  that  "  accidental  historical  truths "  can  never  be 
the  ground  of  "  eternal  rational  truths  ",  the  whole  of  his- 
torical Christianity  being  considered  as  "  accidental  ".  In  the 
same  manner  Kant^^  regarded  moral  truths  as  the  kernel  of 
all  historical  religions.  This  idea  Was  taken  up  by  Hegel  and 
his  followers,  though  they  sought  to  do  more  justice  to  his- 
tory. History,  however,  they  regard  not  as  an  "  outer  "  or 
"empirical  "  history,  but  as  the  history  of  the  development 
of  God's  life  in  man.  In  the  historical  facts  and  truths  of 
Christianity  are  found  only  symbols  of  eternal  truths  in  a 
relative  form.  Hence  Christianity  is  not  separated  from  other 
religions  as  the  product  of  a  supernatural  revelation,  but  its 
symbols  are  regarded  as  the  most  adequate  expression  of 
eternal  religious  truths.  ^^ 

^°  Kant,  Die  Religion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen  der  hlossen  Vernunft. 

"  Modern  examples  of  this  view  are  seen  in  E.  Caird,  The  Evolution 
of  Religion,  1894,  and  O,  Pfleiderer,  Religionsphilosophie  auf  geschicht- 
licher  Grundlage^  1896,  though  Pfleiderer  does  not  adopt  the  pantheistic 
conception  of  God  which  is  characteristic  of  Hegelianism.  This  is  also 
the  view  taken  in  a  more  recent  Article  on  the  "  Absoluteness  "  of  Chris- 
tianity, vid.  E.  Sulze,  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums,  Protestantische 


46o  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

This  whole  conception  has  been  subjected  to  a  searching 
criticism  by  Troeltsch.^^  He  points  out  that  three  ideas  un- 
derlie it,  each  of  which  he  thinks  unwarranted.  It  first  ab- 
stracts from  all  religions  the  universal  element.  This  is  not 
possible  because  religious  ideas  are  always  inseparably  con- 
nected with  their  historically  conditioned  form,  so  that  the 
"  kernel  "  and  "  husk  "  or  the  "  form  "  and  "  content  "  cannot 
be  separated.  Secondly,  this  universal  idea  of  religion  is  re- 
garded as  a  normative  ideal  of  religion  as  it  ought  to  be.  This 
involves  a  fallacy,  since  a  universal  ide^.  abstracted  from  all 
religions  is  too  abstract  to  be  the  ideal  of  religion.  Thirdly, 
this  ideal  is  supposed  to  be  realized  in  Christianity.  This 
Troeltsch  regards  as  impossible  because  no  ideal  is  ever  fully 
attained  in  history,  and  because  the  "  kernel  "  of  religious 
truth  is  inseparable  from  its  historical  "  husk  "  or  clothing. 
Whether  or  not  any  historical  religion  can  be  final,  is  just  the 
question  at  issue,  and  one  upon  which  we  shall  take  issue 
with  Troeltsch.  For  the  rest,  he  has  uncovered  some  of  the 
fallacies  which  underlie  this  method  of  maintaining  the  finality 
of  Christianity.  The  fundamental  mistake  of  this  view,  how- 
ever, is  that  it  is  not  the  Christian  religion  for  which  finality 
is  asserted.  Having  separated  this  so  called  Christianity  from 
all  historical  events  and  also  from  the  teaching  of  Christ  and 
his  Apostles,  this  view  has  not  liberated  true  Christianity  from 
its  "  husk  ",  but  has  reduced  it  to  the  ideas  of  natural  religion 
or  of  the  natural  religious  sentiment.  But  Christianity  is  not 
the  product  of  the  natural  human  reason  nor  of  the  natural 
religious  sentiment.  Whatever,  therefore,  may  be  said  as  to 
the  truth  and  finality  of  the  Christian  religion,  it  should  be 
recognized  that  it  is  not  the  finality  of  Christianity  which  is 
here  maintained. 

It  was  out  of  this  situation  that  the  well  known  dispute 

Monatshafte,  VI.  1902,  pp.  45-56.  Sulze  believes  that  evangelical  super- 
naturalism  is  mistaken  in  supposing  that  anjrthing  "absolute"  can  be 
found  in  history,  and  that  "historical  relativism"  is  mistaken  in  sup- 
posing that  we  are  chained  to  history.  Christ  and  historical  Christianity 
are  simply  a  crutch  to  bring  us  to  God,  and  then  to  be  laid  aside. 

"  Troeltsch,  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums  und  die  Religiongeschichte, 
1902,  pp.  9  sq.,  23  sq. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  461 

on  this  subject  between  Kaftan  and  Troeltsch  grew;  and  the 
second  attempt  to  maintain  the  finality  of  Christianity  may  be 
called  the  Ritschlian.  Kaftan  wishes  to  show  that  Christianity 
is  the  final  religion  and  at  the  same  time  to  do  justice  to  the 
historical  element  in  Christianity.  He  will  isolate  the  Chris- 
tian religion  from  the  application  of  the  so  called  historical 
method  which  would  reduce  Christianity  to  the  level  of  other 
religions.  He  maintains  that  there  is  something  specifically 
different  in  Christianity ;  it  is  a  "  supernatural  "  religion  in  a 
unique  sense. ^^  He  opposes,  therefore,  the  Hegelian  concep- 
tion which  recognizes  finality  only  in  the  ideas  which  his- 
torical Christianity  is  supposed  to  symbolize.  He  opposes  also 
Troeltsch,  the  representative  of  the  school  of  comparative  re- 
ligions, with  whom  Kaftan  carried  on  this  debate. ^^  Troeltsch 
starts  from  the  entire  phenomenon  of  human  religion.  In  all 
religion  there  is  a  revelation  from  God,  and  to  all  religions 
alike  must  be  applied  the  historical  method.  The  history  of 
religions  shows  a  teleological  movement,  so  that  while  the 
historical  method  forbids  us  to  regard  any  religion  as  final, 
Christianity  appears  as  the  highest  point  in  the  evolution  of 
religion.  But  this,  according  to  Kaftan,  is  to  push  the  his- 
torical method  beyond  its  limits  in  two  respects — both  in  af- 
firming that  Christianity  is  the  highest  or  best  religion,  and  in 
denying  that  it  is  anything  more  than  this.  From  the  historical 
point  of  view,  Kaftan  says,  all  different  forms  of  religion  are 
simply  phenomena  to  be  described  and  determined.  The  differ- 
ences between  different  religions  are  simply  facts  to  be  re- 
corded. On  the  basis  of  a  strictly  historical  investigation  there 
can  be  no  absolute  or  final  religion,  but  only  different  religions 
making  this  claim.  The  question  as  to  the  validity  of  this 
claim  transcends  the  historical  point  of  view  altogether.  It 
is  a  dogmatic  and  apologetic  question,  depending  on  other 
than  historical  considerations.  ^^     Hence  historical  science  can 

"Kaftan,  ZTuK.  VII  pp.  82  sq. 

"  For  a  comparison  of  the  views  of  Kaftan  and  Troeltsch  vid.  the  Arti- 
cle of  Niebergall  already  mentioned,  Ueber  die  Absolutheit  des  Christen- 
tums,  Theologische  Arbeiten  aus  dem  Rheinischen  wissenschaftlichen  Pre- 
diger-Verein,  N.  F,  Heft  4,  pp.  46-86. 

=*  Kaftan,  ZTuK.  XIII.  1903,  pp.  257  sq. 


462  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

say  nothing  against  the  standpoint  and  method  of  Christian 
Dogmatics,  in  which  the  theologian  takes  his  standpoint  with- 
in Christianity  and  presupposes  its  final  character  which  rests 
on  other  than  historical  grounds.  In  so  far  as  historical 
method  is  supposed  to  contradict  this,  it  rests  upon  the  erron- 
eous supposition  that  the  judgment  affirming  the  finality  of 
Christianity  is  the  more  valid,  the  greater  the  amount  of 
historical  phenomena  upon  which  it. can  be  based.  The  mis- 
take. Kaftan  thinks,  lies  in  overlooking  the  fact  that  the 
question  as  to  the  truth  and  finality  of  a  religion  is  a  question 
of  an  ideal,  and  one  wthich,  therefore,  cannot  be  settled  by  the 
historical  study  of  religions.  We  must,  accordingly,  take  our 
starting  point  within  Christianity,  and  recognize  in  it  the 
final  revelation  of  God.  Kaftan  does  not  deny  that  there  is  a 
revelation  from  God  in  other  religions.  ^^  He  affirms,  however, 
that  Christ  is  in  such  a  special  sense  the  revealer  of  God,  as 
that  Christianity  is  to  be  recognized  as  the  final  religion.  The 
claim  that  such  a  revelation  is  found  in  Christ  does  not  re- 
quire to  be  based  on  a  philosophy  of  religion,  because  revela- 
tion does  not  consist  in  the  supernatural  communication  of 
truth.  Kant,  he  says,  has  shown  the  limits  of  theoretic  rea- 
son, so  that  the  judgment  which  affirms  the  finality  of  Chris- 
tianity rests  on  the  fact  that  in  Christ  we  experience  the  satis- 
faction of  our  ethical  and  religious  needs.  It  is  true  that,  in 
stating  the  difference  between  himself  and  Troeltsch,  Kaftan 
asserts  that  it  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  recognizes  a  specifically 
supernatural  revelation  in  Christianity  not  found  in  other  re- 
ligions, while  "  supernaturalism  "  for  Troeltsch  denotes  only 
the  relation  of  all  religious  life  and  thought  to  a  transcendent 
God.  This  supematuralness,  moreover,  Kaftan  describes  by 
saying  that  in  Christianity  God  has  entered  the  world  in  a 
way  which  has  occurred  only  once  and  which  is  distinct  from 
the  ordinary  course  of  events. ^^  But  Kaftan  explicitly  re- 
pudiates the  older  or  evangelical  supernaturalism,  and  when 
one  asks  in  what  this  sui)ernaturalism  which  is  ascribed  to  the 
Christian  revelation  consists,  we  are  told  that  we  meet  God 
in  Christ  as  we  do  nowhere  else.     Christianity  is  not  super- 

^ZTuK.  XIII.  1903,  pp.  257  sq.  ^Kaftan,  ZTuK.  VI.  p.  392. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  463 

natural  because  more  immediately  the  product  of  the  divine 
causality  than  other  religions,  but  because  there  is  experi- 
enced in  Christ  a  satisfaction  of  our  ethical  needs  such  as  is 
nowhere  else  to  be  found.  Hence  in  seeking  to  show  that 
Christianity  is  the  absolute  or  final  religion  Kaftan  says  that 
we  start  with  the  heart  and  conscience,  and  recognizing  in 
Christ  the  complete  satisfaction  of  our  ethical  and  religious 
needs,  we  see  in  him  the  only  revelation  of  God,  and  hence 
can  assert  the  finality  of  Christianity.  Having  thus  from  the 
standpoint  of  faith  reached  this  decision,  the  science  and 
philosophy  of  religion  can  confirm  us  in  it,  inasmuch  as  the 
ideals  by  which  we  reach  this  judgment  are  found  to  be  those 
towards  which  the  religious  development  of  man  is  striving. 

Wobbermin's  position  in  his  article  in  criticism  of 
Troeltsch^^  is  similar  to  that  of  Kaftan.  Like  Kaftan  he  asserts 
that  Christianity  claims  to  be  the  final  religion,  and  like  Kaftan 
he  says  that  there  is  no  "  exact  proof  "of  this.  He  asserts, 
however,  that  "  scientific  reflection  "  upon  historical  and  psy- 
chological data  of  a  religious  character  enable  us  to  claim 
finality  for  Christianity,  and  that  Troeltsch  is  mistaken  in  say- 
ing that  from  the  scientific  point  of  view  nothing  in  support  of 
this  can  be  urged.^^  The  "  absolute  values "  of  religion, 
which  are  matters  of  inner  life,  are  found  to  be  satisfied  in 
Christianity,  so  that  it  appears  not  merely  "  absolute  "  in  a 
negative  sense  that  no  higher  or  better  religion  is  conceiv- 
able, but  in  the  positive  sense  of  the  only  and  perfect  religion. 

Neither  Kaftan  nor  Wobbermin  have  successfully  defended 
the  finality  of  Christianity  against  Troeltsch.  The  question 
is  not  whether  they  and  Troeltsch  use  the  word  "  scientific 
proof  "  in  different  senses.  The  question  is  whether  the  finality 
of  Christianity  in  its  full  sense  can  be  maintained  on  their 
premisses.  Troeltsch  is  right  in  denying  this,  because  entirely 
apart  from  the  question  whether  this  is  a  "  scientific  "  or  a 
"  practical "  proof,  the  religious  and  ethical  consciousness 
may  itself  conceivably  be  subject  to  a  development  or  evolution 

^Wobbermin,  Das  Verhaltnis  der  Theologie  zur  modernen  Wissenschaft 
und  ihre  Stellung  im  Gesammtrahmen  der  Wissenschaften,  ZTuK.  1900, 
X.  375  sq. 

^Wobbermin,  ibid.j  p.  392. 


464  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

which  will  carry  it  so  high  that  Christianity  will  no  longer 
satisfy  it.  Christianity  may  appear  to  our  thinking  as  the 
perfect  fulfilment  of  our  religious  and  moral  ideals,  but  ac- 
cording to  the  principles  of  a  naturalistic  evolutionary  phil- 
osophy which  denies  the  high  supernaturalism  of  the  old 
evangelical  theology,  these  ideals  are  in  a  process  of  develoj>- 
ment,  so  that  the  moral  and  religious  ideals  of  the  Christian 
religion  will  be  surpassed.  Nor  can  the  naturalistic  philosophy 
be  refuted  by  pointing  out  the  limits  of  the  "  historical 
method  "  and  its  inability  to  pronounce  upon  these  questions ; 
it  must  be  shown  to  be  an  inadequate  view  of  the  world,  and 
Christian  supernaturalism  in  the  high  sense  of  the  old  the- 
ology must  be  defended,  if  Christianity's  claim  is  to  be  vali- 
dated. 

Wobbermin  feels  the  force  of  this  objection,  but  his  reply 
is  unsatisfactory.  He  seeks  to  show  that  religious  and  ethi- 
cal life  is  distinct  from  other  forms  of  human  culture  and  life. 
Hence  he  concludes  that  while  higher  forms  of  mental  life  in 
other  than  the  religious  and  moral  sphere  are  conceivable, 
any  attempt  to  conceive  a  form  of  religious  life  higher  than 
that  of  Christianity  ends  by  destroying  the  idea  of  religion  and 
ethics  altogether.  Moreover,  he  says,  that  since  religion  in- 
volves the  relation  of  the  finite  to  the  Infinite,  no  conclu- 
sion as  to  the  development  or  perfectibility  of  the  religious 
consciousness  can  be  drawn.  ^^  This  latter  consideration  may 
be  true,  but  is  purely  negative  and  proves  nothing  in  support 
of  the  claim  of  the  finality  of  Christianity.  As  regards  the 
first  point,  it  must  be  said  that  the  religious  and  ethical  con- 
sciousness is  not  distinctive  in  this  sense.  There  is  no  finality 
about  our  religious  or  ethical  ideals  which  does  not  attach  to 
other  norms  of  human  thought.  A  philosophy  which  makes  no 
room  for  the  direct  supernaturalism  of  New  Testament  Chris- 
tianity, will  not  be  able  to  stand  against  one  that  is  antisuper- 
naturalistic  in  this  sense,  and  which  renders  impossible  a  be- 
lief in  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion. 

Furthermore  no  such  sharp  distinction,  as  Kaftan  appears 
to  make,  can  be  held  to  exist  between  the  so  called  theoretic 

"  Wobbermin,  ibid.,  p.  393. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  465 

and  practical  reason.  It  is  one  reason  which  deals  with  data 
of  various  sorts,  some  of  which  are  of  a  practical  and  re- 
ligious character.  The  judgment  which  affirms  the  finality  of 
Christianity  must  therefore  be  rationally,  theoretically  if  you 
will,  grounded.  These  grounds  may  be  in  part  or  to  a  large 
extent  religious  or  ethical,  they  must  nevertheless  be  grounds 
which  are  rationally  valid.  They  may  well  be  wider  than  any 
which  a  merely  comparative  study  of  religion  will  yield,  but 
they  must  be  reasonably  and  rationally,  or  theoretically  suffic- 
ient grounds  of  belief. 

There  is  another  difficulty  inherent  in  the  Ritschlian  po- 
sition. If,  as  those  who  deny  all  "  natural  theology  "  suppose, 
the  whole  course  of  Providence  does  not  reveal  God,  how  can 
Christ,  regarded  simply  as  one  fact  or  event  in  God's  provi- 
dence, reveal  him,  if  Christ's  deity  in  the  sense  of  the  meta- 
physical supernaturalism  of  Christian  theology  be  abandoned? 
On  the  other  hand,  if  God  is  revealed  in  history  and  provi- 
dence, as  Kaftan  would  seem  to  affirm,^^  then  the  question 
arises  upon  what  ground  the  Christian  revelation  is  separated 
from  and  held  superior  to  the  revelation  of  God  in  other  re- 
ligions. Kaftan  v^uld  reply  that  the  Christian  revelation 
with  its  ideas  of  the  kingdom  of  God  and  reconciliation 
through  Christ  perfectly  satisfies  our  religious  ideals  and 
needs.  But  the  selection  of  certain  ideas  from  the  religious 
consciousness,  which  Christianity  is  supposed  to  satisfy,  will 
depend  either  upon  a  religious  philosophy  or  upon  the  Chris- 
tian revelation  itself.  In  the  former  case  the  question  of  the 
absolute  finality  of  this  philosophy  rather  than  of  Christianity 
is  the  result  whereas  in  the  latter  case  no  proof  of  the 
finality  of  Christianity  is  given  unless  these  ideals  are  the  pro- 
diuct  of  a  directly  supernatural  revelation.  Only  the  super- 
naturalism  of  the  old  theology,  which  Kaftan  abandons,  can 
ground  adequately  the  finality  of  Christianity. 

When  we  turn  from  these  religious  "  norms  "  or  "  values  " 
to  the  historical  Christ  who  is  supposed  to  satisfy  them,  we 
meet  with  new   difficulties.     Traub,^^   in  an  article  on  the 

=^  Kaftan,  ZTuK.  VI.  p.  392. 

*^Traub,  Die  religionsgeschichtliche  Methode  und  die  systematische 
Theologie,  ZTuK.  XI.  1901,  pp.  301-340. 


466  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

method  of  comparative  religions  in  its  application  to  theology, 
took  issue  with  Troeltsch  on  the  question  of  the  finality  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Traub's  contention  is  that  the  ground  of 
certitude  as  to  the  finality  of  Christianity  is  one  with  the 
ground  of  certitude  as  to  its  truth,  and  is  given  with  this 
through  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ.  But  since  Christ 
is  a  historical  person,  Traub  is  compelled  to  ask  whether  his- 
torical criticism  does  not  render  uncertain  this  basis  of  certi- 
tude. Traub  asserts  that  historical  criticism  cannot  touch  this 
ground  of  Christian  certitude  because  the  question  does  not 
concern  "  the  details  of  the  external  events,  but  the  life-con- 
tent of  the  entire  person  ".^®  Historical  criticism,  therefore, 
can  say  nothing  against  the  historicity  of  Jesus,  because  of 
the  originality  of  his  personality.  To  deny  the  historicity  of 
such  a  personality,  according  to  Traub,  is  pure  dogmatism. 
This  follows,  he  thinks,  from  the  nature  of  the  historical 
method  which  cannot  speak  either  affirmatively  or  negatively 
on  such  a  point.  The  ground  of  certitude  that  there  is  in 
Christ  the  final  revelation  of  God  is  a  matter  of  faith,  and 
is  quite  independent  of  historical  criticism  and  of  the  his- 
torical method. 

In  reply  to  Traub,  however,  it  must  be  said  that  this  separ- 
ation of  the  question  of  the  ground  of  belief  in  Christianity 
as  a  divine  revelation  and  the  final  religion,  from  the  ques- 
tions of  historical  criticism,  is  impossible.  This  follows  from 
the  simple  fact  that  Christianity  is  a  historical  religion.  The 
question  whether  in  Christ  is  found  the  final  revelation  of 
God  is  one  that  is  inseparably  connected  with  questions  of  a 
historical  nature.  It  is  quite  impossible,  moreover,  to  regard 
the  **  external  details  "  of  Christ's  life  as  matters  for  his- 
torical criticism  to  pronounce  upon,  and  to  suppose  that  Jesus' 
inner  life  is  quite  independent  of  historical  questions.  Traub 
asks  us  to  let  the  inner  life  of  Christ  "  work  upon  us  ".  This 
may  of  course  be  done,  but  not  if  historical  questions  are 
simply  brushed  to  one  side.  All  difficulties,  Traub  says,  are 
overcome  by  "  faith  ".  But  the  question  necessarily  arises  as 
to  the  content  of  such  faith.     If  an  historical  person,  or  his- 

"  Traub,  ibid.,  p.  $2$. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  467 

torical  events,  or  an  ''  inner  life  "  which  is  inseparably  con- 
nected with  historical  matters  and  is  itself  a  historical  phe- 
nomenon, be  the  content  or  object  of  such  faith,  then  thei 
question  of  its  grounds  of  certitude  cannot  be  independent  of 
considerations  of  a  historical  kind.  Notwithstanding  Traub's 
assertion  to  the  contrary,  historical  criticism  can  conceivably 
reach  negative  results  on  points  which  are  absolutely  essential 
to  Christianity,  even  to  the  extent  of  denying  the  historicity  of 
Jesus  himself.  Christian  faith,  therefore,  cannot  simply 
"  demand  "  that  historical  criticism  shall  not  discuss  the  real- 
ities of  such  faith.  Traub  admits^^  that  it  would  make  an  end 
to  the  Christian  faith  if  Christ  should  be  shown  not  to  be  a 
historical  figure;  but  this  is  just  the  logical  result  of  a  histori- 
cal criticism  determined  by  anti-supernaturalistic  principles, 
as  Kalthoff  and  Drews  have  pointed  out  against  Bousset  and 
J.  Weiss.  Traub's  criticism  of  Troeltsch,  therefore,  would 
have  been  more  to  the  point,  had  he  driven  to  its  logical  con- 
clusion the  naturalism  which  detemiines  Troeltsch's  so-called 
historical  method,  rather  than  have  resorted  to  a  vain  at- 
tempt to  prove  the  independence  of  the  Christian  faith  in  this 
respect. 

To  make  this  perfectly  clear  it  is  only  necessary  to  notice 
two  facts  which  are  evident  from  the  earliest  historical  sources 
of  the  life  of  Jesus.  One  is  that  in  Christ's  inner  life  we  find 
a  distinctly  supernatural  element,  and  the  other  is  that  his 
entire  Messianic  consciousness  is  inseparably  and  essentially 
related  to  the  miracles  which  he  performed  and  to  the  great 
miraculous  events  of  his  life.  Accordingly  we  cannot  escape 
from  a  supernatural  Christ  by  turning  to  his  inner  life.  In 
order  to  separate  Christ's  life  from  all  that  is  supernatural,  it 
is  necessary  to  proceed  by  a  process  of  elimination  which  must 
deny  the  historicity 'of  certain  elements  in  the  Gospel  portrait 
of  Jesus,  elements  which  on  purely  objective  historical  grounds 
are  on  the  same  footing  with  those  parts  of  the  Gospels  from 
which  a  merely  natural  Christ  is  to  be  reconstructed.  This 
means  that  the  Christ  which  remains  after  such  a  criticism 
has  done  its  work  is  a  Christ  of  whose  historicity  there  is  no 

^  Traub,  ibid.,  p.  324. . 


468  FINALITY   OF  CHRISTIANITY 

evidence.  This  means  that  Traub  and  the  other  Ritschlian 
theologians,  no  less  than  Troeltsch,  must  face  the  question  of 
the  direct  supernaturalism  of  the  evangelical  theology.  If 
such  a  supernatural  revelation  and  such  a  supernatural  Christ 
be  impossible,  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion  cannot  be 
maintained,  since  even  the  historicity  of  the  Christ  on  which 
the  claim  is  based,  is  rendered  uncertain.  The  conclusion  of 
all  this  is  simply  that  Christianity  in  its  essence  is  a  super- 
natural religion  in  the  high  sense  of  the  old  theology,  and 
therefore  that  Jthe  question  of  its  truth  and  finality  dei^ends 
upon  the  reality  of  such  a  supernatural  action  of  God  in  the 
world.  If  one  abandons  this  high  supernaturalism,  one  cannot 
maintain  the  truth  or  finality  of  Christianity,  just  because  his- 
torically it  is  through  and  through  a  supernatural  religion  in 
this  high  sense.  Even  the  religious  value  of  a  so  called 
"  natural  Christianity  "  is  being  rightly  questioned.  Upon 
such  grounds  the  affirmation  that  it  is  unsurpassable  is  entirely 
without  warrant. 

This  is  fully  recognized  and  emphasized  by  Troeltsch  who, 
in  abandoning  this  high  supernaturalism,  frankly  gives  up  the 
finality  of  Christianity,  so  that  the  issue  really  lies  between  a 
naturalism  which  denies  the  supernatural  in  the  sense  of  the 
direct  action  of  God  in  the  world  apart  from  second  causes, 
and  the  supernaturalism  of  the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment which  affirms  the  supernatural  nature  and  origin  of 
Christianity  in  this  sense. 

Before,  however,  considering  the  view  which  Troeltsch 
maintains  over  against  that  of  Kaftan,  something  must  be  said 
concerning  the  recent  attempt  to  maintain  the  finality  of  Christ- 
ianity on  the  basis  of  Christian  experience.  This  attempt  has 
recently  been  made  by  Professors  Hunzinger  and  Ihmels.^^ 
In  some  respects  their  way  of  approaching  the  question  is 
like   that   of   the   Ritschlian   theologians   whose  views   have 

*  Hunzinger,  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums,  Prohleme  und  Aufgahen 
der  gegenw'drtigen  systematischen  Theologie,  1909,  pp.  63-88;  also  Die 
religionsgeschichtliche  Methode,  Biblische  Zeit-  und  Streitfragen,  1908, 
Serie  IV.  Heft  11 ;  Ihmels,  Centralfragen  der  Dogmatik  in  der  Gegenwart, 
191 1,  pp.  44-54,  on  Die  Absolutheit  des  Christentums  im  Licht  moderner 
Fragestellung ;  and  pp.  54-80  on  Das  Wesen  der  Offenbarung. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  469 

just  been  discussed.  The  Essays  of  Hunzinger  and  Ihmels 
are  written  in  direct  opposition  to  Troeltsch.  And,  like 
the  RitschHans,  Hunzinger  and  Ihmels  wish  to  rest  the 
finality  of  Christianity  in  the  fullest  sense  upon  the  Christian's- 
experience  of  Christ,  denying  the  right  of  the  historical  com- 
parison of  religions  to  speak  either  positively  or  negatively 
upon  the  question.  The  difference  between  these  theologians 
and  those  of  the  Ritschlian  school  in  regard  to  this  subject 
consists  chiefly  in  two  points, — first,  in  the  fuller  recognition 
of  the  directly  supernatural  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  God  on 
the  heart  in  the  production  of  Christian  experience,  and 
secondly  in  the  circumstance  that  in  resting  the  claim  of  the 
truth  and  finality  of  Christianity  on  the  inner  experience  of 
the  soul,  these  theologians  do  not  suppose  that  the  ''  essence 
of  Christianity  "  is  independent  of  the  supernatural  events  of 
the  historic  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament. 

Hunzinger  is  more  typical  of  the  *'  experiential  theology  " 
in  regard  to  this  question  than  is  Ihmels.  For  while  the  latter 
asserts  a  twofold  basis  of  the  finality  of  Christianity — the  im- 
mediate experience  of  communion  with  God  through  Christ, 
and  the  objective  revelation  in  Christ' — the  former  bases  the 
claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  final  religion  upon  experience 
alone.  In  addition  to  this,  Hunzinger  draws  a  sharp  distinc- 
tion between  the  revelation  which  gives  us  Christianity,  which 
he  calls  a  purely  "  formal "  matter,  and  the  ''  content  "  of 
Christianity,  insisting  that  the  nature  as  well  as  the  ground  of 
the  finality  of  Christianity  lies  in  the  final  character  of  its 
truths  as  experienced  by  us,  rather  than  in  the  fact  that  Christ- 
ianity rests  upon  a  supernatural  revelation,  though  this  latter 
truth  is  apparently  accepted.  The  finality  of  Christianity, 
then,  attaches  to  its  centre, — Jesus  Christ.  And  not  simply  to 
Christ  as  the  perfect  revelation  of  God,  but  in  the  sense  that 
in  Christ's  Person  and  Work  is  found  the  only  means  of  com- 
munion with  God.^^  The  basis  of  such  a  claim,  therefore,  can- 
not be  determined  by  asking  in  what  sense  Christianity  rests 
on  a  special  revelation,  but  rather  depends  upon  the  fact  that 
a  critical  analysis  of  Christian  experience  shows  that  "  abso- 

*^  Hunzinger,  Probleme  u.  Aufgahen  usw.  pp.  68,  69. 


4;o  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

lutcness  "  or  finality  is  a  "  constitutive  factor  "  of  it.  Hence 
the  method  of  proof  is  simply  to  show  that  the  finality  of 
Christianity  is  necessarily  involved  in  the  experience  of  fellow- 
ship with  God  through  Christ.^^ 

This  separation  of  the  question  of  the  nature  and  grounds 
of  the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion,  from  the  question  of 
Christian  supematuralism  and  especially  of  supernatural  reve- 
lation, cannot  be  carried  out.  It  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  on 
the  reason  which  Hunzinger  gives  for  taking  his  position.  The 
alleged  fact  that  all  other  religions  claim  finality  only  in  respect 
to  resting  on  a  divine  revelation,  besides  being  questionable, 
affords  no  valid  reason  for  seeking  the  finality  of  Christianity 
only  where  it  might  not  be  a  claim  of  other  religions.  Hun- 
zinger's  position,  however,  is  impossible  because  of  the  nature 
of  Christian  experience.  No  doubt  the  experience  of  recon- 
ciliation and  communion  with  God  which  is  given  in  Christian 
experience,  is  in  its  nature  final  and  absolute  in  the  fullest 
sense.  But  still  it  is  not  possible  to  avoid  the  question  of  the 
supernatural  character  of  the  Christian  revelation,  just  because 
of  the  nature  and  presuppositions  of  Christian  experience. 
Its  nature  is  determined  by  the  opposition  of  sin  and  grace,  the 
natural  consciousness  and  the  regenerate  consciousness.  That 
sin  has  obscured  our  natural  knowledge  of  God  and  destroyed 
communion  with  God,  is  a  fact  of  experience  no  less  than  a 
truth  of  Scripture.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  change  from 
the  natural  religious  consciousness  to  the  regenerate  or  Christ- 
ian religious  consciousness,  cannot  be  explained  as  a  natural 
evolution,  as  Hunzinger  would  fully  admit.  It  is,  however, 
on  the  full  recognition  of  this  fact,  that  the  argument  from 
Christian  experience  must  proceed.  But  this  shows  that  the 
validity  of  the  argument  depends  upon  presuppositions.  The 
efficient  cause  of  Christian  experience,  on  this  view,  is  the 
Holy  Spirit.  But  from  the  human  side  Christian  experience 
springs  from  faith,  the  doctrinal  content  of  which  faith  is 
determined  by  the  special  Christian  revelation.  For  just  as 
the  general  religious  consciousness  of  man  is  determined  by 
a  conception  of  God.,  so  the  Christian  consciousness  and  exper- 

"  Hunzinger,  ibid.,  p.  79. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  471 

ience  is  determined  by  the  conception  of  God  given  in  the 
Christian  revelation.  From  this  it  follows  that  the  question  of 
the  nature  of  this  Christian  revelation  is  fundamental  for  the 
determination  of  the  question  of  the  truth  and  finality  of  the 
Christian  religion.  This  is  a  presupposition  of  the  argument 
from  Christian  experience,  which  is  a  strong  argument  in  con- 
nection with  the  "  external  "  arguments  for  Christianity,  but 
which  cannot  be  independent  of  them.  Troeltsch  is  right  in 
asserting  that  the  claim  of  the  finality  of  Christianity  rests 
ultimately  upon  this  basis  of  supernatural  revelation,  and 
Hunzinger  cannot  escape  this  by  resorting  to  the  argument 
from  Christian  experience,  for  the  reasons  just  given.  Nor 
is  it  easy  to  see  why  he  does  so,  since  he  apparently  admits  the 
claims  of  the  old  theology  as  to  the  supernatural  character  of 
the  Christian  religion.  It  only  weakens  his  position,  then, 
to  turn  from  this  and  to  seek  in  Christian  experience  alone  the 
ground  of  Christianity's  claim  to  be  the  final  religion.  More- 
over, his  idea  that  the  question  as  to  the  finality  of  Christianity 
has  to  do  with  the  "  content "  of  Christian  truth  rather  than 
with  the  "  formal  "  question  of  revelation,  erects  too  sharp 
and  artificial  a  distinction  between  the  truths  of  Christianity 
and  the  revelation  of  which  they  are  the  product.  The  claim 
that  these  religious  truths  are  absolute  and  final,  rests  upon  the 
supernatural  character  of  the  revelation  which  gives  them  to 
man.  They  determine  Christian  experience  and  are  impli- 
cated in  it,  and  therefore  this  experience  witnesses  to  the  final- 
ity of  this  revelation,  but  this  is  ultimately  dependent  on  the 
supernatural  and  hence  final  character  of  the  revelation  which 
gives  us  Christianity  rather  than  on  the  experience  which 
Christianity  produces. 

In  this  respect  the  position  of  Ihmels  is  more  adequate. 
After  affirming  against  Troeltsch,  that  the  finality  of  Christ- 
ianity is  a  matter  of  faith  and  that  it  depends  on  the  experience 
of  the  satisfaction  of  our  religious  needs  by  Christ,  Ihmels 
goes  on  to  show^^  that  this  subjective  ground  of  belief  in  the 
finality  of  Christianity,  must  be  supplemented  by  an  objective 
ground,  which  he  finds  in  the  final  character  of  the  Christian 

^Ihmels,  op.  cit.,  p.  54. 


472  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

revelation.  The  weakness  of  Ihrnel's  position,  however,  lies 
in  the  inadequacy  of  his  discussion  of  the  whole  subject  of 
revelation.^"*  He  gives  no  clear  distinguishing  mark  between 
the  special  revelation  which  he  claims  for  Christianity  and 
the  general  revelation  which  he  recognizes  in  other  religions. 
His  conception  of  the  "  special  "  and  final  character  of  the 
Christian  revelation  is  not  clearly  thought  out  nor  adequately 
grounded  over  against  the  school  of  comparative  religions. 
In  the  section  on  the  idea  of  revelation,^*^  after  rejecting  ex- 
plicitly the  ide^  of  the  "  old  Dogmatics  "^  which  conceived  of 
Revelation  as  "  the  communication  of  supernatural  truth  ", 
(the  supernatural  communication  of  truth  would  express  the 
idea  more  accurately),  and  after  asserting  that  the  Christian 
revelation  consists  chiefly  in  the  "  facts  "  of  the  Gospel,  Ihmels 
goes  on  to  point  out  the  necessity  of  what  he  calls  a  "  word- 
revelation  "  in  order  that  the  "  fact-revelation  "  may  be  under- 
stood. And  in  speaking  of  the  way  in  which  this  comes  to 
man,  he  speaks  of  it,  in  some  undefined  way,  as  from  God's 
Spirit  and  as  "  created  by  God  in  the  sphere  of  history  ",  thus 
apparently  recognizing  its  supernatural  character.  In  all  this 
it  is  difficult  to  see  the  point  which  discriminates  Ihmels'  view 
from  the  older  evangelical  view  which  he  rejects,  and  which 
would  have  afforded  a  basis  for  his  claim  of  the  finality  of 
Christianity.  But  in  the  immediately  following  section  of  this 
chapter,  in  which  he  discusses  the  claim  of  Christianity  to  be 
the  religion  of  a  special  revelation,^®  Ihmels  apparently  changes 
his  view.  He  raises  the  question  whether  the  fact  of  the  his- 
torically conditioned  character  of  Christianity  is  compatible 
with  its  claim  to  a  specifically  supernatural  origin.  He  asserts 
that  it  is,  but  bases  this  upon  what  he  calls  a  "  universal  super- 
naturalism  "  which  maintains  that  in  all  historical  events,  not- 
withstanding their  historical  relations  and  conditions,  God  is 
directly  operative.  But  if  all  history  and  all  revelation  is  thus 
immediately  or  directly  from  God,  the  question  arises  whether, 
in  view  of  this,  and  especially  in  view  of  the  analogies  between 
Christian  ideas  and  those  of  other  religions,  the  specific  and 

"  Ihmels,  ibid.,  pp.  55-8o.  *  Ihmels,  ibid.,  pp.  55-72. 

"Ihmels,  ibid.,  pp.  72-80. 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY  473 

final  character  of  the  Christian  revelation  can  be  maintained. 
This  so  called  "  universal  supernaturalism  "  or  the  idea  that 
God  is  providentially  back  of  all  history  is  just  what  Troeltsch 
would  assert.  Indeed  Ihmels  is  compelled  to  fall  back  on 
Christian  experience  after  all,  for  he  says  that  the  specifically 
supernatural  character  of  Christianity  rests  on  the  supernatural 
character  of  Christ,  and  belief  in  this  is  based  ultimately  on 
Christian  experience. 

In  this  Ihmels  appears  to  be  moving  in  a  circle  in  affirming 
that  the  experience  of  the  finality  of  Christianity  depends  on 
the  supernatural  character  of  the  Christian  revelation,  and  in 
conceiving  that  this  depends  on  the  Christian's  experience  of 
the  power  of  Christ.  Moreover  in  affirming  that  all  revelation 
is  supernatural  and  that  all  revelation,  including  the  Christian, 
is  "  psychologically  mediated  ",  he  removes  all  basis  for  main- 
taining the  specifically  supernatural  character  of  Christianity, 
and  all  essential  distinction  between  his  view  and  that  of 
Troeltsch  who  asserts  a  direct  mystical  revelation  of  God  in 
all  religions.  This  leaves  Ihmels  no  basis  upon  which  to  defend 
his  view  of  the  final  character  of  Christianity  against  Troeltsch 
who  maintains  that  Christianity  is  simply  the  highest  point 
yet  attained  in  the  evolution  of  religion,  and  only  relatively 
higher  than  other  religions.  In  attempting  to  find  any  point 
of  discrimination,  therefore,  between  Christianity  and  other 
religions,  Ihmels  falls  back  on  Christian  experience,  so  that  we 
never  escape  from  the  circular  reasoning  to  which  attention 
was  called.  If  all  revelation  in  all  religions  is  "  supernatural  " 
as  resulting  from  a  general  mystical  contact  of  God  with  the 
soul,  and  if  the  Christian  revelation  is  "  psychologically  medi- 
ated "  i.  e.  natural  as  regards  its  mode  of  occurrence,  there  is 
no  basis  for  belief  in  the  specifically  supernatural  character  of 
Christianity,  and  no  essential  diflFerence  between  Ihmels  and 
his  opponent  Troeltsch,  for  this  is  just  what  Troeltsch  would 
assert.  The  conclusion  which  Troeltsch  draws  in  regard  to 
the  relation  of  Christianity  to  other  religions  must  logically 
result. 

Accordingly  the  question  of  the  finality  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion depends  upon  that  of  the  validity  of  the  claim  of  Christ- 
ianity to  rest  upon  a  specifically  supernatural  revelation,  and 


474 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


that  not  merely  in  regard  to  the  great  supernatural  facts  of 
Christianity,  but  also  in  regard  to  the  doctrinal  interpretation 
of  these  facts  in  the  Scripture.  This  revelation  claims  to  differ 
from  the  general  revelation  of  God  in  human  religious  thought 
in  this  respect,  that  while  other  revelation  is  natural  in  its 
mode  of  occurrence,  this  special  revelation  is  given  in  a  super- 
natural manner,  coming  directly  from  God. 

This,  as  has  been  said,  is  fully  recognized  by  Troeltsch,  the 
spokesman  on  this  question  for  the  school  of  comparative  re- 
ligion. He  denies  the  finality  of  Christianity  in  the  fullest 
sense,  just  because  he  denies  the  supernaturalism  upon 
which  it  rests.  This,  indeed,  is  the  main  point  of  his  criticism 
of  the  Ritschlian  school,  that  they  make  claims  as  regards  the 
finality  of  Christianity,  after  they  have  abandoned  the  only 
possible  basis  of  these  claims.  Troeltsch  affirms  that  the  "  old 
supernaturalism  "  affords  the  only  basis  for  the  claim  that 
Christianity  is  the  final  religion.  The  old  theology  can,  he 
says,  logically  escape  the  results  of  the  application  of  the 
"  historical  method  "  because  its  view  of  the  nature  of  the 
Christian  history  is  thoroughly  supernaturalistic.  The  finality 
of  Christianity  cannot  be  based  upyon  a  "  value  judging  "  in- 
terpretation of  certain  historical  facts,  but  requires  historical 
facts  which,  by  reason  of  the  "  concentration  "  in  them  of 
"  absolute  "  values,  are  separate  and  distinct  from  all  other 
history.  It  requires,  moreover,  a  separation  of  Christianity 
from  any  causal  connection  with  the  general  evolution  of 
religion.  Troeltsch  says  that  "  in  all  these  respects  the  tradi- 
tional dogmatic  method  has  an  absolutely  consequent  and  cor- 
rect sense.  Everything,  therefore,  depends  upon  the  proof  of 
the  supernaturalism  which  shall  ground  this  claim,  and  abolish 
the  relativity  of  the  historical  method  ".^"^  He  also  asserts  that 
"  it  is  only  by  this  proof  that  the  dogmatic  method  wins  a 
secure  basis  and  the  character  of  a  methodical  principle  ".^^ 
In  this  respect  it  resembles  the  historical  method,  for  just  as 
"  the  historical  method  starts  with  a  metaphysical  assumption 
of  an  immanent  causal  interconnection  of  all  human  pheno- 

"  Troeltsch,  Ueber  historische  und  dogmatische  Methode  der  Theologie, 
Theologische  Arheiten  aus  dem  Rheinischen  wissenschaftlichen  Prediger- 
Verein,  N.  F.  Heft  4,  1900,  p.  98.  **  Troeltsch,  ibid.,  p.  99. 


FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  475 

mena  ",  so  the  dogmatic  method  starts  with  a  metaphysical 
principle  which  lies  at  its  basis.  This  is  the  high  supernatural- 
ism  of  the  old  evangelical  theology,  without  which  the  claim 
of  the  finality  of  Christianity,  is,  according  to  Troeltsch,  no 
better  than  *'  a  knife  without  handle  and  without  blade  ". 

This  supernaturalism,  moreover,  as  Troeltsch  correctly  per- 
ceives, must  find  its  ground  in  a  conception  of  God,  of  man, 
and  of  the  world.  Upon  this  view,  Troeltsch  says,  God  is  not 
confined  to  the  merely  immanent  mode  of  action  through 
second  causes,  but  in  addition  to  this  is  conceived  "  as  capable 
also  of  an  extraordinary  mode  of  action  which  interrupts  and 
breaks  through  this  plexus  of  second  causes  " ;  and  man  is  con- 
ceived of  as  fallen  and  sinful,  and  in  need  of  such  a  super- 
natural salvation.  ^^  This  is  what  Troeltsch  calls  the  "  diialis- 
tic  "  idea  of  God  and  the  world :  and  he  is  right  in  regarding 
it  as  the  indispensable  foundation  of  the  finality  of  Christian- 
ity. He  finds  it  strange  that  the  Ritschlians  should  maintain 
the  finality  of  the  Christian  religion,  having  abandoned  this 
view  of  the  world. 

Since  therefore,  according  to  Troeltsch,  this  supernatural- 
istic  view  of  the  world  must  be  abandoned,  the  demand  of  the 
"  scientific  situation  "  at  the  present  time  is  that  the  "  historical 
method  "  be  stringently  applied  to  theology.  And  since  the 
standards  or  "  values  "  by  means  of  which  the  Ritschlians 
separate  Christianity  as  the  final  religion  from  all  other  re- 
ligions are  subjective,  we  must  start,  not  from  a  position 
within  Christianity,  but  from  the  entire  phenomenon  of  human 
religion.  All  religion  rests  on  divine  revelation,  and  in  all  is 
found  a  similar  religious  consciousness.^^  The  separation  of 
Christianity  from  the  evolution  of  religion  is  a  remnant  of  the 
old  dualistic  view  of  the  world.  Troeltsch,  however,  is  fully 
aware  that  the  so  called  historical  method  rests  on  philo- 
sophical presuppositions.  His  idea  is  that  the  Illumination  of 
the  1 8th  Century  rendered  necessary  a  new  idea  of  scientific 
method  and  a  new  view  of  God  and  the  world.  Its  essential 
nature  is  expressed  by  the  words  "  immanence  "  and  ''  anti- 

^  Troeltsch,  ibid.,  p.  100. 

*"  Troeltsch,  Die  wissenschaftliche  Lage  und  ihre  Anforderungen  an  die 
Theologie,  1900,  p.  Z7- 


476  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

supernatural  ism  ",  or  a  world-view  which  explains  everything 
by  a  causuality  which  acts  only  through  and  within  the  evolving 
world.  This  view  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  idea  of  a  trans- 
cendent and  supernatural  causality,  which  acts  upon  and  in- 
dependently of  the  evolving  series  of  phenomena.  This  ren- 
ders impossible  belief  in  the  supernatural  origin  of  Christian- 
ity, which  must  be  regarded  as  a  natural  phenomenon  and  as 
absolutely  conditioned  by  the  complex  of  causes  in  the  midst  of 
which  it  arose. 

This  **  modern  view  "  of  the  world,  as  Hunzinger  says,^^  has 
as  its  watchwords;  immanence,  evolutionV  and  relativity.  The 
principle  of  "  immanence  "  calls  for  the  explanation  of  every 
event  and  every  thought  in  the  world's  history  by  causes  solely 
within  the  world.  Everything  supernatural  is  excluded.  The 
means  by  which  such  a  naturalistic  explanation  of  Christianity 
is  made,  is  the  idea  of  an  evolution  which  would  show  that 
Christianity  is  the  product  of  the  general  evolutionary  process 
which  oi>erates  by  purely  immanent  causes,  so  that  the  limits 
which  separate  Christianity  from  other  religions  are  done  away 
with.  The  resulting  principle  of  "  relativity  "  will  recognize 
no  absolute  or  fixed  religious  values  in  this  religious  evolution, 
so  that  Christianity  cannot  be  regarded  as  the  final  religion  in^ 
the  sense  of  being  unsurpassable.  This  philosophy  really  deter- 
mines the  so  called  historical  method  which  accordingly  makes 
use  of  three  principles, — *^''  criticism  ",  "  analogy  ",  and  "  cor- 
relation "  or  the  mutual  interdependence  of  all  phenomena. 
"  Criticism  "  renders  uncertain  all  historical  events.  It  oper- 
ates by  "  analogy  "  which  lays  it  down  as  a  rule  of  historical 
criticism  that  all  past  history  is  to  be  judged  as  to  its  possibility 
by  its  analogy  with  our  present  experience.  The  principle  of 
"correlation  ",  being  likewise  predetermined  by  the  natural- 
istic philosophy,  asserts  that  all  historical  events  form  one  un- 
broken stream  to  the  exclusion  of  everything  supernatural  in 
the  sense  of  being  immediately  produced  by  God. 

The  "  scientific  situation  "  calls  for  the  stringent  application 
of  this  method  to  the  study  of  Christianity,  and  makes  three 

**  Hunzinger,  Die  religionsgeschichtUche  Methode  usw.  p.  7. 
"Troeltsch,  Ueber  historische  u.  dogmatische  Methode  usw.  cf.  TheoL 
Arheiten  usw.  N.  F.  Heft  4,  pp.  89  sq. 


FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  477 

demands — :*^  First,  that  Christianity  be  studied  in  its  rela- 
tion to  other  religions.  Secondly,  that  this  historical  study  of 
religion  must  proceed  to  a  philosophy  of  religion  which  shall  in- 
terpret the  meaning  of  this  religious  evolution.  This  religious 
development  is  not  a  chaotic  affair,  **  but  exhibits  a  scale  of 
values  which  are  not  merely  subjective  nor  yet  mere  abstrac- 
tions from  the  different  religions,  but  which  are  the  guiding 
ideals  towards  which  the  development  of  religions  is  tending. 
Christianity  will  thus  appear  as  the  highest  of  all  religions 
because  most  fully  realizing  these  ideals.  Thirdly,  the  Chris- 
tian faith  must  be  stated  in  the  light  of  modern  science,  so 
that  the  old  doctrines  will  disappear,  and  Christianity  will 
assume  a  form  determined  by  the  scientific  culture  of  the 
present  age.*^  Applied  concretely  to  Christianity  these  so 
called  historical  principles  do  away  with  the  supernatural 
Christianity  of  the  New  Testament.  They  forbid  belief  in  a 
supernatural  revelation,  a  supernatural  Redeemer,  and  a  super- 
natural salvation.  They  demand  a  purely  "  natural  "  explana- 
tion of  Christianity,  which  must  reduce  its  truths  to  the  basis  of 
natural  religion. 

The  result  of  the  application  of  these  principles  to  the 
question  of  the  finality  or  "  absoluteness  "  of  Christianity  is 
obvious.  In  earlier  writings  Troeltsch  asserted  that  Chris- 
tianity is  the  "  absolute  "  religion  since  it  is  the  highest  and 
best  of  all  religions.  Later,  however,  he  published  an  elaborate 
discussion  of  the  whole  idea  of  "  absoluteness  "  or  finality,  in 
which  he  abandons  the  claim  that  Christianity  is  the  "  ab- 
solute "  religion,  except  in  what  he  calls  a  "  naive  "  sense,*^ 
which  is  only  expressive  of  the  feeling  of  satisfaction  in  Christ 
which  the  Christian  possesses.  This  becomes  "  artificial  "  and 
invalid  when  the  attempt  is  made  to  rationalize  it,  either  after 
the  manner  of  the  "  old  theology  ",  of  Hegelianism,  or  of 
Ritschlianism. 

The  result,  of  course,  is  that  every  element  in  Christianity  is 
of  relative  significance  only.    This  is  not  intended  in  the  "  un- 

"  Troeltsch,  Die  wissenschaftUche  Lage  usw.  pp.  47  sq. 
** Troeltsch,  ibid.,  p.   102.  ""Troeltsch,  ibid.,  pp.  47-56. 

**  Troeltsch,    Die    Absolutheit    des    Christentums    und    die  Religionsge- 
schichte,  1902,  pp.  100  sq. 


478  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

limited  "  sense  that  all  religious  values  and  ideas  are  illusions, 
nor  that  Christianity  is  genetically  derivable  from  the  other 
religions,  which  Troeltsch  roundly  denies."*^  He  means  simply 
that  everything  in  history,  including  Christ  and  Christianity, 
can  only  be  understood  in  connection  with  its  historical  en- 
vironment; that  Christianity  and  every  other  religion,  is  the 
product  of  the  mystical  contact  between  God  and  the  human 
soul,  the  specific  differences  between  them  being  determined  by 
the  religious  receptivity  of  the  bearers  of  the  divine  revelation. 
The  philosophy  of  religion,  however,  can  show,  that,  while  the 
primitive  Christian  doctrines  were  stated  in  the  forms  of 
thought  of  the  past,  Christianity  is  nevertheless  the  highest 
level  of  man's  religious  development  because  most  nearly  ap- 
proaching the  realization  of  the  religious  ideals  which  are 
guiding  the  historical  evolution,  but  which  can  never  be  fully 
realized  by  it."*^  Troeltsch  means  what  Bousset  does  when  he 
affirms  that  history  shows  the  "  absolute  superiority "  of 
Christianity  over  other  religions.*® 

The  inconsistency  and  defects  of  this  view  are  apparent. 
In  the  first  place,  the  question  of  the  validity  of  the  religious 
view  of  the  world  and  the  question  whether  Christianity  is 
the  highest  and  best  religion,  are  questions  which  transcend 
the  limits  of  purely  historical  investigation  and  of  the  historical 
method.  The  demand  for  the  application  of  a  comparative 
and  historical  method  to  the  study  of  religion  and  Christianity 
may  intend  either  the  study  of  religion  as  a  psychological 
phenomenon,  or  the  question  of  the  objective  validity  of 
religious  knowledge.  From  the  former  point  of  view  the 
question  as  to  whether  or  not  the  religious  consciousness  is 
illusory  cannot  be  raised.  On  the  other  hand,  if  this  latter 
question  is  raised,  then  the  so  called  historical  method  proceeds 
upon  certain  metaphysical  assumptions  which  transcend  the 
sphere  of  "  historical  science  "  altogether.  The  application  of 
the  principle  of  "immanent  causality",  therefore,  may  only 
denote  the  limitation  of  the  investigation  to  the  study  of  re- 
ligious phenomena  from  this  standpoint  of  their  human  con- 

"  Troeltsch,  ibid.,  p.  50  sq.  "  Troeltsch,  ibid.,,  p.  62. 

**  Bousset,  IVesen  der  Religion,  p.  237. 


FINALITY   OF   CHRISTIANITY  479 

ditions,  in  which  case  the  question  of  the  objective  validity  of 
the  reHgious  consciousness  cannot  be  raised — much  less  the 
question  of  the  supernatural  claims  and  nature  of  Christianity ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  this  principle  of  ''  immanent  causal- 
ity "  is  to  deny  the  possibility  of  the  supernatural  modes  of 
God's  activity,  then  it  must  proceed  upon  a  metaphysical  basis 
which  will  cut  so  deeply  as  to  do  away  with  Religion  in  so  far 
as  it  involves  a  relation  of  man  to  God.  In  other  words,  the 
consequent  carrying  out  of  this  anti-supernaturalism  is  to  be 
found,  as  Hunzinger  says,^^  in  Monism  whether  materialistic 
or  idealistic,  and  in  positivism.  The  latter  philosophy  asserts 
that  the  purely  phenomenalistic  point  of  view,  which  science 
may  take,  is  the  only  possible  and  ultimate  one.  Since  it  recog- 
nizes only  phenomena  and  their  relations,  no  affirmations  about 
religion,  considered  as  a  relation  of  man  to  God,  are  possible. 
Monism  in  both  its  forms  is  also  destructive  of  religion. 
Materialism  resolves  religious  life  into  a  "  mechanism  of  the 
atoms  ",  and  idealistic  monism  makes  no  adequate  distinction 
between  man  and  God.  Its  God  is  simply  a  name  for  the  sum 
total  of  spiritual  life  in  the  world.  However  vigorously,  there- 
fore, this  philosophy  may  protest  against  what  it  calls  the 
''  naturalism  "  of  materialistic  monism,  it  itself  not  merely  sets 
aside  the  supernaturalism  of  the  New  Testament  Christianity, 
but  is  destructive  of  religion  itself  considered  as  a  relation  of 
man  to  God.  To  follow  a  method  which  will  really  know  of 
nothing  but  immanent  causes,  must  result  in  the  destruction  of 
the  basis  of  religion,  or  in  a  merely  phenomenalistic  study  of 
religious  phenomena,  which  makes  no  assertions  in  regard  to 
the  ultimate  religious  problems.  In  attempting  to  answer  these 
questions  Troeltsch  transcends  the  limits  of  his  method 
altogether. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is,  therefore,  only  a  necessary  result 
of  this  that  Troeltsch  is  quite  inconsistent  in  the  application  of 
his  so  called  historical  method.  He  uses  this  method  only  so 
far  as  to  enable  him  to  do  away  with  the  claim  of  Christianity 
to  rest  upon  a  supernatural  revelation  and  to  come  more 
directly  from  God  than  do  other  religions,  and  to  be  the  final 

^  Hunzinger,  Die  reUgionsgeschichtliche  Methode  usw.  p.  9. 


48o  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

religion.  He  abandons  the  application  of  his  method  in  order 
to  affirm  the  independence  of  reHgion  and  its  underivabihty 
from  other  forms  of  life,  the  objective  validity  of  our  religious 
knowledge  as  resting  on  divine  revelation,  and  the  superiority 
of  Christianity  to  all  other  religions.  This  inconsistency  can 
be  illustrated  by  the  way  in  which  Troeltsch  arbitrarily  limits 
the  application  of  each  of  his  principles  of  method.  Thus,  the 
principle  of  "  correlation "  demands  the  derivation  of  all 
religious  phenomena  from  causes  wholly  within  the  Universe. 
This  would  do  away  with  the  underiyability  or  "  indepen- 
dence "  of  religion  in  human  life.  It  would  demand  its  ex- 
planation from  lower  and  simpler  elements  in  human  nature. 
But  Troeltsch  asserts  over  and  over  again  in  his  Article  on 
"  The  Independence  of  Religion  "  and  in  his  more  recent  work 
on  "  Psychology  and  Epistemology  ",^^  that  religion  cannot  be 
reduced  to  lower  terms  and  that  it  is  the  result  of  a  revealing 
act  of  God  which  "  breaks  through  "  the  natural  phenomena  of 
our  psychic  life.  The  "  principle  of  method  ",  therefore,  which 
is  applied  in  order  to  reduce  Christianity  to  the  level  of  other 
religions,  is  not  applied  to  the  explanation  of  religion  in 
general.  In  the  same  way  the  principle  of  a  wholly  immanent 
causality  is  not  consistently  applied  in  reference  to  the  evolu- 
tion of  religion.  Perceiving  the  impossibility  of  a  genetic 
derivation  of  all  religions,  one  from  the  other,  Troeltsch  af- 
firms that  each  religion  springs  independently  from  the  direct 
contact  of  God  with  the  soul  of  man.  This  is  not  equivalent 
to  the  universalizing  of  the  principle  of  Christian  supernatural- 
ism,  but  it  is  a  conception  which  evidently  far  transcends  the 
limits  of  Troeltsch's  method. 

The  same  inconsistent  limiting  of  his  method  is  seen  in  his 
assertion  that  Christianity  is  the  highest  religion.  Troeltsch 
does  not,  as  some  of  his  critics  have  affirmed,  proceed  by  a 
standard  which  is  wholly  subjective.  The  ideal  by  which  he 
ascribes  this  place  to  Christianity  is  supposedly  determined  by 
the  historical  and  comparative  study  of  religion.  It  is  not  a 
general  abstraction   from  all  religions,  but  rather  the  ideal 

'^^  Troeltsch,  Psychologic  und  Erkcnntnisthcoric  in  dcr  RcUgionswisscn- 
schaft,  p.  38. 


FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  481 

toward  which  they  all  strive,  and  which  Christianity  most 
fully  realizes.  But  the  religious  value  and  the  validity  of  this 
ideal  is  dependent  on  the  fact  that  it  is  supposed  to  transcend 
the  whole  historical  evolution  of  religion  and  every  historical 
religion.  It  is  only,  therefore,  because  Troeltsch's  religious 
consciousness  is  under  the  influence  of  historical  Christianity, 
that  he  recognizes  this  ideal  as  most  fully  realized  in  it.  The 
comparative  study  of  religions  could  never  yield  this  result,  as 
Troeltsch  fully  realizes  and  explicitly  affirms.  The  question  of 
the  place  of  Christianity  among  the  world's  religions  is  one 
that  cannot  be  answered  by  such  a  method. 

This  method,  moreover,  if  it  is  to  observe  its  limits  as  a 
method  which  seeks  to  explain  historical  phenomena  from 
purely  immanent  causes,  may  explain  that  which  may  be  ex- 
plained in  this  way ;  it  cannot  affirm  that  supernatural  events, 
which  cannot  be  thus  explained,  are  impossible,  without  going 
beyond  its  limits  and  becoming  dogmatically  anti-supernatural- 
istic. 

In  the  third  place,  therefore,  it  should  be  noted  that  this  is 
precisely  what  Troeltsch  has  done.  This  so-called  historical 
method  is  not  historical ;  it  is  dogmatic,  that  is,  determined  by 
naturalistic  metaphysical  presuppositions.  In  this  lies  the 
fundamental  inconsistency  of  Troeltsch's  position.  At  times 
it  is  made  to  appear  as  if  the  denial  of  any  direct  supernatur- 
alism  were  the  result  of  the  application  of  a  purely  unbiased 
historical  method  to  the  investigation  of  the  different  relig- 
ions. But  in  point  of  fact  this  naturalistic  philosophy  under- 
lies and  pre-determines  the  rules  of  the  so-called  historical 
method.  It  is,  therefore,  a  foregone  conclusion  that  only 
naturalism  will  be  read  out  of  any  study  of  the  history  of 
religions,  which  is  prosecuted  under  the  control  of  these 
rules.  Thus,  to  take  but  one  example,  the  principle  of 
"  analogy  "  affirms  that  nothing  can  have  happened  in  the 
past  that  we  do  not  experience  to  happen  in  the  present.  But 
this  is  a  pure  assumption  begging  the  question  and  involving 
the  very  point  at  issue.  It  is  conceivable  that  there  might  be 
historical  evidence  which  would  lead  us  to  the  opposite  con- 
clusion, unless  we  have  pre-judged  the  whole  question.  In 
other  words,  if  we  base  our  conclusions  on  a  study  of  the 


482  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

entire  experience  of  the  human  race  instead  of  on  a  mere 
section  of  that  experience,  we  may  find  that  it  is  fallacious  to 
erect  one  section  of  that  experience  into  a  norm  for  the  de- 
termination of  the  character  of  the  whole.  It  is  no  historical 
judgment  to  assert  that  Jesus  never  rose  from  the  dead  be- 
cause we  now  do  not  see  dead  men  rising  again.  In  a  word, 
the  method  which  is  supposed  to  yield  a  naturalistic  result, 
is  itself  the  product  of  an  anti-supernaturalistic  metaphysics 
which  must  justify  itself  as  a  view  of  the  world,  and  cannot 
rest  upon  anyv  so-called  historical  study  which  it  itself  pre- 
determines. 

At  times  Troeltsch  recognizes  this.  We  have  seen  how,  in 
comparing  what  he  calls  the  "  dogmatic  method  "  with  what  he 
calls  the  "  historical  method  ",  he  asserts  that  just  as  the  for- 
mer proceeds  upon  the  metaphysical  basis  of  supernaturalism, 
so  the  latter  is  based  upon  the  metaphyicsal  idea  of  an  "  im- 
manent causation  "  which  he  says  is  the  precise  opposite  of 
supernaturalism.^^ 

It  is  the  great  defect  of  Troeltsch's  whole  mode  of  proced- 
ure that  he  gives  no  adequate  defense  of  this  metaphysics 
over  against  the  supernaturalism  of  evangelical  Christianity. 
He  simply  asserts  that  the  Illumination  of  the  i8th  Century 
has  rendered  belief  in  it  impossible ;  or  that  "  historical 
science  "  has  rendered  it  untenable.  But  he  gives  no  adequate 
refutation  of  it,  and  in  every  case  his  anti-supernaturalism  apn 
pears  as  an  unwarranted  assumption  which  pre-determines  the 
so-called  scientific  investigation,  which  is  in  turn  called  upon 
to  serve  as  its  support. 

This  is  true  not  only  of  Troeltsch,  it  is  true  of  all  natur- 
alism which  is  not  based  upon  materialism  or  pantheism. 
Bousset  affirms^  ^  that  it  is  a  fundamental  characteristic  of 
modern  thought  to  explain  everything  in  the  world  by  purely 
immanent  causes  (von  innen  heraus),  and  that  the  modern 
view  of  the  world  postulates  the  universal  reign  of  law  in 
nature  and  also  in  spiritual  life.^*    No  really  adequate  reason 

"Troeltsch,   Ueber  historische  und   dogmatische   Methode   der  Theol., 
Theol.  Arheiten  usw.  p.  99. 
"  Bousset,  Das  Wesen  der  Religion,  1903,  p.  243. 
'^  Ibid.,  p.  257. 


FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  483 

however,  is  given  to  justify  this  postulate  or  to  show  why  a 
transcendent  and  personal  God  may  not  act  in  a  supernatural 
manner  in  the  Universe  which  he  created.  The  same  thing  is 
illustrated  in  the  case  of  the  late  Prof.  Pfleiderer.  He  differs 
from  Troeltsch  in  that  he  asserts  the  finality  of  Christianity 
somewhat  after  the  Hegelian  fashion.  But  his  method  of 
getting  rid  of  historical  and  supernatural  Christianity  is  simi- 
lar to  that  of  Troeltsch.  It  is  in  the  name  of  *'  history  ",  of 
"  science  ",  and  of  "  method  '\  that  Pfleiderer  would  do  away 
with  supernatural  Christianity,^^  and  yet  it  is  perfectly  evi- 
dent that  an  anti-supernaturalistic  philosophy  is  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  so-called  "  scientific  method  ".  For  it  is  said  to  be 
a  method  of  "  causal  thinking  ",  according  to  which  "  every 
event  is  the  necessary  effect  of  causes  whose  operation  is 
determined  by  their  connection  with  other  causes,  or  by  their 
place  in  the  totality  of  a  reciprocal  action  of  forces  in  ac- 
cordance with  law  ".^^  This  method  is  to  be  applied  to  Chris- 
tian theology  and  renders  impossible  miracles  in  nature  and 
such  supernatural  events  as  regeneration.  These  are  de- 
clared to  be  "  unscientific  "  and  "  impossible  ".^^  Pfleiderer 
is  too  clear  a  thinker  not  to  see  that  this  view  is  the  precise 
opposite  of  that  of  the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament 
and  of  the  "  old  theology  "  which  recognizes  the  direct  or 
supernatural  activity  of  God  apart  from  all  natural  or  second 
causes,  and  which  regards  the  great  Christian  facts  as  "  effec- 
ted by  causes  which  are  outside  the  causal  connections  of 
finite  forces  ".  It  is  clear,  then,  that  it  is  not  "  science  ",  but 
this  naturalistic  philosophy  which  is  at  the  bottom  of  Pfleid- 
erer's  rejection  of  the  supernatural  Christianity  of  the  New 
Testament. 

Accordingly  the  real  issue  in  reference  to  the  truth  and  final- 
ity of  Christianity  is  whether  the  high  supernaturalism  of  the 
Christianity  of  the  New  Testament  can  be  maintained,  or 
whether  a  naturalistic  philosophy  expresses  the  ultimate  truth 
concerning  God's  relation  to  the  world.  Troeltsch,  moreover, 
is  right  in  affirming  that  this  supernaturalism  presupposes  a 

'*'*  Pfleiderer,  Evolution  and  Theology  and  Other  Essays,  1900,  pp.  1-26. 
""Ibid.,  p.  2.  ''\Ibid.,  p.  9. 


484  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

definite  conception  of  God  and  of  his  relation  to  the  world; 
and  Troeltsch  states  this  conception  correctly  when  he  says 
that  according  to  this  view  God  is  not  confined  to  his  action 
through  second  causes,  but  is  capable  of  "  breaking  through  " 
these  causes  and  "  intruding  "  directly  in  the  world  to  pro- 
duce effects  which  the  whole  course  of  Nature  and  history 
could  not  produce  even  under  God's  providential  control.'^® 
Can  God  thus  "  intrude  "  ?  Can  he  intervene  in  the  world  to 
save  man  from  sin  ?  This  is  the  question  upon  which  the  very 
life  of  Christianity  depends,  for  Christianity  is  through  and 
through  a  supernatural  religion  in  just  this  sense. 

That  this  question  of  the  possibility  of  such  a  supernatural 
mode  of  God's  activity  is  the  fundamental  question,  can  be 
seen  from  the  fact  that  most  of  the  denials  of  the  super- 
natural character  and  origin  of  Christianity  rest  ultimately  on 
the  assumption  of  the  impossibility  of  the  supernatural  in  this 
sense.  We  have  seen,  for  example,  that  this  assumption  is 
supposed  to  be  a  rule  of  method  of  "  modern  historical 
science  ".  That  it  is  a  mere  assumption  follows  from  the  fact 
that  no  valid  objection  to  events  supernatural  in  this  sense, 
can  be  made  if  their  possibility  be  granted.  A  miracle,  to  take 
one  instance  of  such  a  supernatural  event,  can  be  said  to  be 
incredible  only  if  incapable  of  proof,  or  if  impossible.  It  can 
be  held  to  be  incapable  of  proof,  however,  only  if  it  is  sup- 
posed to  be  impossible.  Two  arguments  have  been  advanced 
to  show  that  a  miracle,  though  possible,  is  nevertheless  in- 
capable of  proof,  neither  of  which  is  valid.  One  of  these  is 
that  which  Hume  advanced  in  his  famous  Essay  on  Miracles.^^ 
It  is,  in  a  word,  that  there  is  always  a  uniform  experience 

"Ueber  historische  u.  dogmatische  Methode,  usw.,  Theol.  Arheiten  usw. 
p.  100.  Troeltsch  here  gives  a  clear  description  of  the  old  evangelical  super- 
naturalism  when  he  says  that  God  is  not  confined  to  an  action  through 
second  causes,  but  can  directly  intrude  into  the  complex  of  such  causes. 
His  words  are  that,  according  to  this  view,  "  Gott  ist  nicht  in  den  Zusam- 
menhang  eines  correlativen,  sich  iiberall  gegenseitig  bedingenden  Wirkens 
und  eines  jede  lebendige  Bewegung  nur  als  Bewegung  des  Gesammtzu- 
sammenhangs  schaffenden  Zweckwollens  eingeschlossen,  sondern  seiner 
regelmassigen  Wirkungsweise  gegeniiber  auch  zu  ausserordentlichen,  die- 
sen  Zusammenhang  aufhebenden  und  durchbrechenden  Wirkungen  fahig." 

"  Hume,  Works,  vol.  IV.  pp.  124  sq. 


FINALITY   OF   CHRISTIANITY  485 

against  the  occurrence  of  any  such  event  which  amounts  to  a 
proof  of  its  non-occurrence.  The  nerve  of  this  argument  is 
expressed  in  Hume's  statement  ''  that  no  testimony  is  sufficient 
to  establish  a  miracle  unless  the  testimony  be  of  such  a  kind 
that  its  falsehood  would  be  more  miraculous  than  the  fact 
which  it  endeavors  to  establish."  The  fallacy  here  is  ob- 
vious. The  question  at  issue  is  precisely  whether  human  ex- 
perience as  a  whole  has  or  has  not  included  such  events. 
Huxley  criticised  Hume's  argument,  pointing  out  how  it 
amounts  to  a  denial  of  the  possibility  of  miraculous  events  and 
giving  it  a  more  plausible  form  of  statement. ^^  Regarding 
simply  the  concrete  question  of  the  grounds  of  belief  in  such 
events,  Huxley  asserted  that  "  the  more  a  statement  of  fact 
conflicts  with  previous  experience,  the  more  complete  must  be 
the  evidence  which  is  to  justify  us  in  believing  it."  This  de- 
mands that  we  require  an  amount  of  evidence  equal  to  the  im- 
probability of  the  event,  which  is  just  a  "  miraculous  "  amount 
of  evidence.  Hence  a  miracle  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  incap- 
able of  proof.  But  this  argument  is  not  valid.  Notice  what  one 
must  prove.  Is  it  simply  the  occurrence  of  the  event,  or  the 
supernatural  character  of  the  cause  ?  Obviously  it  is  primarily 
the  former.  Rothe^^  insisted  on  this  distinction,  and  Warfield 
has  called  attention  to  it  very  pointedly. ^^  We  are  not  required 
to  give  evidence  to  show  that  an  event  which  has  occurred  is 
due  to  a  supernatural  cause,  but  simply  that  an  event  which 
must  be  due  to  a  supernatural  cause  has  taken  place.  But  if  the 
evidence  is  only  to  establish  the  fact  of  the  occurrence  of  the 
event,  there  is  no  reason  to  demand  any  miraculous  amount  of 
evidence,  unless  we  have  some  a  priori  notion  regarding  its 
causality  which  really  makes  us  regard  it  as  impossible.  And 
even  granting  that  the  evidence  must  not  only  establish  the 
occurrence  of  the  event,  but  also  show  that  its  cause  is  super- 
natural, no  argument  from  a  uniform  past  experience  can  be 
sufficient  to  render  the  event  incapable  of  having  sufficient  evi- 
dence for  it  presented,  unless  the  impossibility  of  such  an  event 
be  presupposed.    This  whole  line  of  argument  amounts  simply 

*"  Huxley,  Hume,  pp.  131,  132. 

^  Rothe,  Zur  Dogmatik,  pp.  88  sq. 

•"B.  B.  Warfield,  On  Miracles;  Bihle  Student,  VII.  pp.  121-126. 


486  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

to  this — that  while  in  the  abstract  the  possibility  of  super- 
natural events  is  admitted,  one  is  nevertheless  so  convinced  by 
his  own  small  section  of  experience  that  such  events  cannot 
happen  that  no  amount  of  evidence  can  convince  him. 

The  other  main  argument  to  show  that  while  miracles  are 
possible,  they  are  nevertheless  incapable  of  proof,  is  that  there 
is  always  the  possibility  that  they  are  due  to  some  unknown 
higher  natural  laws.  This  argument  has  plausibility  only  upon 
the  supposition  of  the  impossibility  of  the  direct  action  of  God 
within  the  sphere  of  and  apart  from  second  causes.  Once 
grant  the  occurrence  of  the  Resurrection  of  Christ ;  it  is  more 
reasonable  to  refer  it  to  the  immediate  power  of  God  than  to 
any  unknown  natural  laws,  unless  we  presuppose  the  imf>os- 
sibility  of  such  action  by  God.  And  if  we  do,  we  will  scarcely 
be  convinced  of  the  Resurrection  of  Christ  by  any  amount  of 
evidence. 

The  question,  therefore,  as  was  said,  is  whether  God  can  act 
in  this  directly  supernatural  manner;  or  whether  events  due  to 
this  direct  Divine  power  are  possible.  The  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion may  be  briefly  put  as  follows — that  the  impossibility  of  the 
supernatural  in  this  sense,  can  be  maintained  only  upon  grounds 
that  transcend  not  only  actual  and  possible  experience,  but  also 
any  supposed  necessity  arising  from  the  causal  judgment  or  the 
idea  of  natural  law ;  in  a  word  only  on  the  basis  of  some  anti- 
theistic  view  of  the  world. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  there  can  be  no  question  of  any- 
thing supernatural  on  the  basis  of  the  old  fashioned  mater- 
ialism. There  being  no  God  and  no  human  soul  except  as  a 
perishable  product  of  the  body,  it  is  useless  to  talk  of  any  re- 
ligion, not  to  speak  of  Christianity. 

This  view  of  the  world  is  very  largely  abandoned,  and  its 
place  has  been  taken  by  what  goes  by  the  name  of  Naturalism. 
This,  in  a  word,  is  the  view  of  the  world  which  dogmatically 
asserts  that  the  mathematico-mechanical  description  of  the 
world  is  the  only  and  ultimate  explanation  of  the  entire  uni- 
verse. Its  principles  are,  as  James  Ward  says,^^  the  mechanical 
theory  of  the  universe,  the  evolution  theory  in  a  mechanical 

"James  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  1903,  I.  Preface. 


FINALITY   OF  CHRISTIANITY  487 

form,  and  the  theory  that  mental  states  are  shadows,  "  epi- 
phenomena  "  of  physical  phenomena.  Though  too  sceptical 
to  assert  the  existence  of  any  "  substance  ",  and  hence  reject- 
ing materialism,  naturalism,  as  Ward  says,  abandons  neither 
the  materialistic  standpoint,  nor  the  materialistic  attempt  to 
give  a  purely  mechanical  explanation  of  all  the  facts  of  life 
and  mind.  Its  method  consists  simply  in  taking  the  ideas  of 
abstract  mathematical  mechanics,  and  applying  them  to  the 
real  world  of  concrete  experience.  The  mechanical  scientist 
simply  leaves  all  qualitative  distinctions  unexplained;  the 
naturalist  explains  them  all  away  by  reducing  them  to  merely 
quantitative  and  mathematical  ones.  It  is  simply  mechanical 
science  become  dogmatic  and  offering  a  final  explanation  of 
everything.  This  view  leaves  no  room  for  teleology,  for  re- 
ligious or  any  other  ideals.  It  rules  out  the  supernatural  in 
any  sense,  and  is  essentially  anti-theistic.  It  has  been  ably 
criticised  by  James  Ward  in  his  well  known  Gifford  Lectures. 
On  the  other  hand,  idealistic  pantheism,  or  ''  spiritualistic 
monism  "  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  is  just  as  much  opposed 
to  the  directly  supernatural  action  of  God  and  to  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  as  above 
set  forth,  as  is  materialism  and  naturalism.  It  is  true  that  it 
interprets  the  world  in  terms  of  spirit,  but  since  it  identifies 
God  and  the  world  and  allows  no  existence  or  activity  tran- 
scendent to  the  universe,  any  distinction  whatever  between  the 
natural  and  the  supernatural  is  impossible.  There  is  really  no 
basis  for  any  religion  since  the  distinction  between  God  and 
man,  and  with  it  the  personality  of  God  is  denied. 

It  is  not  our  purpose,  however,  nor  would  it  be  possible 
within  the  limits  of  this  essay,  to  give  any  criticism  or  discus- 
sion of  the  anti-theistic  theories.  Those  theories,  as  has  been 
said,  leave  no  room  for  any  religion,  if  religion  is  a  relation  of 
man  to  God,  since  they  do  away  wth  any  distinction  between 
God  and  man.  It  is  of  course  impossible  to  discuss  the  ques- 
tion of  the  finality  of  Christianity  or  of  the  possibility  of  the 
supernatural  modes  of  God's  activity  with  one  who  does  not 
believe  in  God.  The  theological  writers  whose  views  we  have 
been  discussing,  however,  are  theists.  What  we  wish  to  do, 
therefore,  is  to  show  that  upon  a  theistic  view  of  the  world 


488  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  possibility  of  this  directly  supernatural  activity  of  God, 
implied  in  the  Christian  view  of  the  world,  cannot  be  de- 
nied. In  saying  this,  it  is  a  truly  theistic  view  that  is  meant ; 
a  view  which  is  in  earnest  with  the  idea  of  the  personality  and 
transcendence  of  God.  But  since  the  main  reasons  which 
theists  urge  against  pantheism  are  just  those  reasons  which 
lead  us  to  regard  God  as  personal  and  transcendent,  this  is 
the  only  theism  which  can  maintain  itself  against  pantheism. 
The  evidences  of  teleology  or  purpose  which  mind  is  called  on 
to  explain,  are  explained  only  if  this  finality  or  purposiveness 
is  intentional.  In  other  words  a  '*  pantheistic  theism  ",  to  use 
a  phrase  of  Rashdall's,^^  is  untenable.  To  say  that  God  is  a 
Person,  but  "  God  is  all  ",  is  not  possible.  If  finite  spirits  are 
all  parts  of  God,  then  theism  is  abandoned,  for,  as  Rashdall 
says,  upon  such  a  view  we  could  only  call  God  good  by  main- 
taining that  the  deliverences  of  our  moral  consciousness  have 
no  validity  for  God,  and  this  Bradley  would  have  us  believe. 
But  a  God  who  is  "  beyond  good  and  evil  "  is  not  God  and 
assuredly  not  an  object  of  worship. ^^  Moreover  the  formula 
"  God  is  all  "  is  really  unmeaning.  Such  an  all  inclusive  con- 
sciousness swallows  up  all  distinctions  including  its  own  per- 
sonality as  well  as  that  of  man.  It  is  really  meaningless  to 
speak  of  one  consciousness  as  "  included  in  another  conscious- 
ness *'.  It  is  the  characteristic  of  consciousness  ^'  to  exist  for 
itself  ".  The  finite  spirit  is  not  independent  of  God,  but  its 
consciousness  cannot  be  "  included  "  in  God's  consciousness 
without  losing  the  personality  of  both  God  and  man.  We 
agree  with  Rashdall  that  McTaggert  is  right  in  asserting  that 
if  God  is  to  include  in  himself  all  other  spirits,  and  if  the 
personality  and  self  consciousness  of  those  spirits  is  not  to  be 
denied,  then  this  absolute  or  so-called  God  in  which  they  are 
to  be  included,  cannot  be  considered  as  conscious  or  self-con- 
scious or  have  the  attributes  of  God.  We  thus  lose  God  and 
fall  into  "  non-theistic  idealism "  and  pluralism.  Hence  a 
truly  theistic  view  asserts  the  personality  of  God  and  also  that 
he  infinitely  transcends  the  entire  universe,  the  entire  sum  of 


•*H.  Rashdall,  Philosophy  and  Religion,  1910,  p.  loi. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  104. 


FINALITY  OF   CHRISTIANITY  489 

whose  energies  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  infinite  power 
of  God. 

Theism,  moreover,  not  only  asserts  the  personality  and  tran- 
scendence of  God,  it  regards  him  as  the  Creator  of  the  uni- 
verse. The  world  cannot  be  regarded  simply  as  an  "  exper- 
ience "  or  "  thought  "  of  God,  as  the  idealist  would  have  us 
believe,  for  then  it  could  not  be  distinguished  from  all  the 
thoughts  of  God  which  are  not  actually  realized,  nor  would  its 
relative  independence  be  explained.  The  world  is  the 
created  product  of  God's  power,  upheld  and  governed  by  him. 
This  is  the  theistic  view,  and  it  is  our  contention  that  no  theist 
can  deny  the  directly  supernatural  modes  of  God's  activity, 
because  in  the  act  of  Creation  itself  is  given  the  first  instance 
of  such  activity,  and  since  God,  being  the  Creator  of  the  world, 
cannot  be  entangled  in  his  created  product. 

We  have  to  ask,  then,  upon  what  grounds  the  transcend- 
ence of  God  is  affirmed  and  the  transcendent  modes  of  his 
action  on  the  world  denied;  or  upon  what  grounds  it  is  held 
that  God  is  not  only  immanent  and  yet  that  only  his  immanent 
mode  of  action  is  possible.  This  is  done  usually  upon  two 
grounds.  In  the  first  place,  supernatural  events  are  said  to 
be  impossible  because  they  imply  a  suspension  of  or  interfer- 
ence with  natural  laws.  But  what  is  a  natural  law?  The 
term  is  sometimes  used  simply  as  an  empirical  statement  or 
description  of  the  way  in  which  events  uniformly  happen.  If 
this  is  the  meaning  of  natural  law,  it  is  obvious  that  it  does 
not  render  impossible  miracles  or  any  other  class  of  super- 
natural events.  A  miracle,  for  example,  being  ex  hypothesi 
an  event  outside  of  the  natural  empirical  order  of  things,  can- 
not be  proven  either  possible  or  impossible  by  any  experience 
of  this  natural  order.  If  experience  includes  such  events,  it 
is  no  longer  an  experience  based  on  the  purely  natural  order  of 
things,  while  on  the  other  hand  we  cannot  infer  from  any 
merely  uniform  experience  that  events  cannot  occur  which 
will  transcend  this  hitherto  experienced  uniformity.  Some- 
times the  term  natural  law  is  used  to  denote  a  necessary  mathe- 
matical equation,  and  is  applied  in  an  attempt  to  describe 
phenomena  from  the  idea  of  a  number  of  mass  points  in  mo- 
tion.    But  the  science  of  mechanics  is  fully  aware  that  this 


490  FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

mechanical  view  is  not  an  ultimate  explanation  of  everything. 
If  this  latter  supposition  is  made,  then  the  view  point  of  natural 
science  is  transcended,  and  we  fall  into  naturalism  which  is 
an  anti-theistic  speculative  theory.  Or  once  more,  a  natural 
law  is  sometimes  supposed  to  be  an  efficient  force  which 
causes  the  observed  phenomena  to  follow  the  uniformity  which 
is  observed.  In  this  case  the  uniformity  could  be  predicted, 
and  would  be  more  than  an  empirical  generalization.  But  even 
this  idea  of  natural  law  does  not  render  supernatural  events 
impossible.  \Ve  may  not  suppose  that  God  the  Creator  of  the 
universe  is  so  subjected  to  the  laws  of^  his  creation  that  he 
cannot  act  in  the  world  directly.  If  God  is  not  simply  a  name 
for  nature,  but  is  the  Creator  of  nature,  he  cannot  be  en- 
tangled in  his  creation.  Nor  can  the  sum  of  the  energies  in 
the  universe  in  any  way  express  the  totality  of  his  power.  It 
was  infinite  power  that  brought  the  world  into  being,  and  that 
world  whose  laws  simply  express  the  providential  control  of 
the  Creator,  cannot  constitute  a  limit  to  the  Omnipotence 
which  gave  rise  to  it.  Neither  does  this  providential  control 
exhaust  the  ways  by  which  God  may  act  upon  his  creation. 
The  possibility  of  the  directly  supernatural  mode  of  God's  ac- 
tion follows  from  the  idea  of  the  divine  transcendence  which 
is  the  center  of  an  adequately  theistic  conception  of  God.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  go  with  the  pantheist  and  deny  all  efficiency 
to  second  causes,  in  order  to  realize  that  they  cannot  limit  God. 
If  we  believe  that  God  is  infinite  and  the  universe  finite,  there 
is  absolutely  no  basis  for  the  assertion  that  God's  action 
through  second  causes  is  the  only  way  he  can  act.  Moreover 
the  immanent  activities  of  God  are  rooted  in  his  transcendence. 
If  we  resolve  his  providential  control  into  a  mere  name  for  the 
forces  of  Nature,  we  are  really  giving  up  the  idea  of  God's 
providence  and  falling  into  a  pantheism  which  does  not  dis- 
tinguish God  from  the  world.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  real 
nature  of  God's  Providence,  according  to  theism,  be  recog- 
nized it  will  be  seen  to  involve  the  personality  and  the  tran- 
scendence of  God.  In  a  word,  the  reasons  for  belief  in  God 
as  against  pantheism,  are  reasons  for  belief  in  an  infinite  Per- 
son, infinitely  transcending  the  world.  The  affirmation  that 
God  is  infinitely  transcendent  of  the  world,  and  yet  can  only 


FINALITY   OF   CHRISTIANITY  491 

act  through  natural  causes  is  one  that  cannot  stand  against 
pantheism. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  sometimes  affirmed  that  super- 
natural events  are  impossible  because  they  contradict  the 
causal  judgment  as  a  necessary  law  of  thought  which  pre- 
supposes that  nature  is  an  absolutely  closed  and  concatenated 
system  of  second  causes.  Any  intrusion  into  this  system  is 
supposed  to  violate  a  necessary  law  of  thought.  This  objec- 
tion, which  appears  still  more  serious,  is  still  less  plausible 
than  the  former.  All  that  the  causal  judgment  asserts  is  that 
there  is  no  effect  without  an  adequate  cause.  There  is  no 
possible  way  by  which  this  can  be  made  to  exclude  the  im- 
mediate causality  of  God,  if  it  be  granted  that  there  is  a  God. 
It  will  be  replied  that  the  idea  of  cause  is  one  that  applies  only 
to  relations  between  phenomena,  and  does  not  apply  to  the 
relation  of  God  to  the  world.  But  this  can  only  mean  that 
the  idea  of  cause  which  is  valid  for  natural  science  cannot  be 
applied  to  God.  If  God  is  the  Creator  of  the  world,  he  can 
be  the  efficient  agent  of  effects  in  the  world,  call  this  by  what 
name  you  will. 

The  conclusion  of  all  this  is  that  upon  no  ground  other 
than  that  offered  by  an  anti-theistic  view  of  the  world,  can 
be  based  a  denial  of  the  possibility  of  the  supernatural  modes 
of  God's  activity. 

If  this  be  so,  then  the  question  of  the  supernatural  origin  and 
character  of  Christianity  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  its  claim 
to  finality,  is  simply  one  of  evidence.  Into  the  question  of 
Christian  evidences  we  cannot  enter.  The  question  ulti- 
mately reduces  itself  to  this — is  it  more  reasc-able  to  be- 
lieve that  the  divine  Christ  of  the  New  Testament,  who  has 
transformed  the  world,  is  a  myth  or  a  reality.  The  idea  that 
Jesus  was  a  mere  man  who  spake  no  mighty  words  and 
wrought  no  mighty  deeds,  who  was  deceived  by  current  Mes- 
sianic notions,  who  was  killed  by  his  enemies  and  never  rose 
again; — ^this  idea  is  that  of  a  Jesus  who  cannot  be  found  in 
the  historical  sources  of  Christianity,  and  who,  if  he  could 
be  so  found,  could  never  have  inspiied  his  followers  to  deify 
him,  nor  be  the  cause  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  historical 
Christianity.     The  only  Christ  of   the  earliest  sources  is  a 


492 


FINALITY  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


supernatural  and  divine  Christ,. — the  Christ  of  Peter,  of  Paul, 
of  John,  of  the  Synoptists,  and  of  the  sources  which  are  sup- 
posed to  underlie  the  Synoptists — a  Christ,  in  a  word,  who 
claimed  to  be  God,  who  lived  like  God,  and  who  has  wrought 
effects  which  only  God  could,  and  who  is  an  adequate  explan- 
ation of  the  Christian  religion  in  its  rise  and  progress.  The 
question  of  the  truth  and  consequently  of  the  finality  of  Chris- 
tianity, therefore,  reduces  itself  to  this — whether  in  view  of 
the  possibility  of  the  supernatural  and  of  a  theistic  view  of 
the  world,  and  of  the  evidences  for  the  reality  of  this  Christ, 
it  is  more  reasonable  to  supp>ose  that  Christianity  is  a  product 
of  the  myth  building  fantasy,  or  that  the  Christ  of  the  New 
Testament  is  a  reality. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  TPiE 
SHEPHERD  OF   HERMAS 

Kerr  Duncan  Macmillan 


The  Problem  and  its  ^Bearings, 
Tht  External  Evidence. 

The  date  of  publication  of  the  Shepherd. 

Its   immediate   reception. 

Its  later  position — in  Gaul,  Africa,  Alexandria,  Rome. 
The  Internal  Evidence. 

Its  literary  form. 

Relation  to  apocalyptic  and  Hermetic  literature. 

Was  Hermas  a  prophet? 

Hermas'  life  and  character. 

Hermas  a  composite  figure. 

Alternation  of  singular  and  plural. 

Notable  omissions  explained. 
Smmtnary. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE 
SHEPHERD  OF   HERMAS 

One  need  not  apologize  for  choosing  what  noay  appear  to 
some  an  unimportant  and  petty  problem  in  the  history  of  the 
church.  It  is  not  such.  Its  sohition  will  affect  considerably 
our  estimate  of  the  church  of  the  second  century,  esi)ecially 
in  respect  to  its  literary  activity,  its  dogmatic  conceptions, 
and  the  part  played  in  it  by  Christian  prophecy.  Moreover 
it  has  a  direct  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  origin  and  growth 
of  the  New  Testament  canon.  For  there  is  a  number  of 
scholars  to-day  who  affirm  that  the  idea  of  a  New  Testament 
canon  as  we  now  have  it  does  not  appear  in  the  church  until 
toward  the  end  of  the  second  century;  that  up  to  that  time 
the  Old  Testament  (including  the  Apoci^pha  and  Jewish 
Aix)calypses)  had  been  the  "  Bible  "  of  the  church,  and  the 
words  of  the  Lord  and  the  utterances  of  Christian  prophets 
had  been  closely  associated  with  it  as  authoritative;  that  this 
condition  continued  until  about  the  close  of  the  second  cen- 
tury, when,  out  of  the  struggle  with  Gnosticism  and  Montan- 
ism  the  church  emerged  with  a  new  standard  of  canonicity 
namely  apostolicity}  That  is  to  say  it  is  asserted  that  Chris- 
tian prophecies  even  when  reduced  to  writing  were  regarded 
as  authoritative  in  the  church  just  because  they  were  prophecies 
and  without  any  regard  to  their  date  or  the  person  of  the 
prophets,  and  this  continued  until  the  exigencies  of  the 
church  demanded  that  a  new  test  be  erected,  at  which  time 
those  prophecies  which  had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  authori- 
tative were  deix)sed  from  their  high  dignity  unless  they  could 
establish  a  claim  to  apostolic  origin. 

*E.  g.  Harnack,  Dogmengeschichte,  4  Aufl.  I,  pp.  372-399.  Leipoldt, 
Entstehung  des  netitest.  Kanons,  I,  pp.  ^^,  37  f.,  39  Zusatz  2,  41  ff.  B. 
Weiss,  Einlcit.  in  d.  Neue  Test.  3  Aufl.  Sec.  5,  4,  n.  i ;  8,  5 ;  9,  6. 


496  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

The  Shepherd  of  Hernias  has  always  played  a  part  in  the 
discussion  attending  this  theory  for  it  is  one  of  the  so  called 
prophecies  which  are  said  to  have  been  degraded,  but  it  has 
not,  I  think,  played  the  part  it  should  have  or  will  when  its 
unique  position  is  understood.  For  not  only  can  its  date  be 
approximately  fixed  in  the  first  half  of  the  second  century, 
but  it  is  the  only  one  of  the  so  called  prophecies  which  does 
not  claim  for  itself  apostolic  origin.  In  connection  with  its 
history  therefore,  can  the  test  of  prophecy  versus  apostolicity 
in  the  middle. and  third  quarter  of  the  second  century  be 
brought  to  the  clearest  issue.  If  it  be  found  that  the  book 
was  published  and  accepted  as  a  prophecy,  we  shall  be  able 
to  tell  from  the  nature  of  the  reception  accorded  it  what  the 
opinion  of  the  church  then  was  regarding  contemporaneous 
Christian  prophecy.  And  if  on  the  contrary  it  turns  out  that 
it  was  not  published  or  accepted  as  a  prophecy,  the  main  prob- 
lem will  be  to  ascertain  how  such  a  work  could  in  the  course 
of  say  forty  years  claim  equal  rank  with  acknowledged  in- 
spired and  authoritative  books;  and  we  shall  incidentally  have 
removed  from  the  discussion  the  only  work,  which  at  present 
can  be  pointed  to  in  support  of  the  theory  that  Christian 
prophecy  qua  prophecy,  was  authoritative  in  the  second  cen- 
tury. I  therefore  propose  to  examine  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas 
and  its  early  history  with  a  view  to  determining  the  author's 
intention  regarding  it,  the  nature  of  its  reception  and  treat- 
ment by  the  early  church,  and  how  and  why  it  is  involved 
in  the  history  of  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament. 

It  is  strange  that  this  subject  has  been  comparatively  neg- 
lected. The  text  of  the  Shepherd  has  recently  received  very 
careful  attention,  the  questions  of  its  origin  and  unity  and  date 
have  been,  and  are  still,  warmly  debated,  and  the  material 
furnished  by  it  is  liberally  drawn  upon  by  all  students  of  the 
early  Christian  church.  But  the  question  of  the  intention  of 
the  author  in  publishing  his  work  in  the  form  of  an  apocalypse 
has  been  on  the  whole  much  neglected.  Most  writers  to-day 
seem  to  assume  that  its  author  and  his  contemporaries  in- 
genuously believed  that  he  had  been  the  recipient  of  real  and 
divine  revelations.  But  little  or  no  discussion  is  given  to  the 
matter.     For  the  sake  of  completeness  I  shall  enumerate  the 


I 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  497 

four  hypotheses  which  to  my  mind  exhaust  the  possibiHties, 
any  one  of  which  might  be  regarded  as  satisfactory;  and  I 
may  add  that  each  of  them  has  its  supporters.  ( i )  The  work 
may  be  regarded  as  a  genuine  revelation.^  (2)  It  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  dehberate  though  pious  fraud.^  (3)  The  visions 
and  revelations  may  be  regarded  as  purely  subjective.  In 
this  case  Hermas  may  be  regarded  as  a  mystic,  or  a  vision- 
ary, or  epileptic,  or  be  classed  in  a  general  way  with  the 
*'  prophets  "  of  the  second  century,  without  inquiring  par- 
ticularly about  the  psychology  of  such  "  prophecy  ".  Some 
such  explanation  as  this  is  quite  possible,  being  not  infrequently 
paralleled  in  history,  and  we  must  give  it  the  more  consider- 
ation as  it  is  the  view  most  generally  accepted  by  scholars  to- 
day.^ (4)  We  may  regard  it  as  fiction,  pure  and  simple,  and 
the  visions  and  heavenly  commands  as  a  Hterary  garb  deliber- 
ately chosen  by  the  author  without  any  intention  of  deceit;  in 
other  words  it  may  be  an  allegory.^    Of  these  four  possibilities 

^  In  modern  times  this  has  been  held  by  Wake  (Apostolical  Fathers,  p. 
187),  and  some  Irvingite  scholars,  e,  g.  Thiersch,  Die  Kirche  im  aposto- 
lischen  Zeitalter,  pp.  350  ff. 

*  So  apparently  Bardenhewer,  Geschichte  der  altkirchlichen  Literatur 
(1902),  Vol.  I.  p.  563,  "  Der  Verfasser  schreibt  auf  Grund  gottlicher  Offen- 
barungen  und  infolge  gottlichen  Auftrags.  Er  tritt  als  ein  vom  Geiste 
Gottes  inspirierter  Prophet  auf.  Ohne  Zweifel  hat  er  damit  seinen  Mah- 
nungen  und  Mitteilungen  eine  grossere  Kraft,  eine  hohere  Weihe  geben 
wollen.  Dass  er  Anstoss  erregen  wiirde,  war  kaum  zu  befiirchten.  Er 
schrieb  zu  einer  Zeit,  wo  der  Glaube  an  die  Fortdauer  des  prophetischen 
Charismas  noch  allegemein  geteilt  wurde  ".  Mosheim,  De  rebus  Christ, 
ante  Constant.,  pp.  163,  166  inclines  to  a  view  of  Hermas  which  makes  him 
"  scientem  volentemque  fefellisse ".  Salmon,  Diet.  Chr.  Bio.,  Art.  "  Her- 
mas ",  thinks  Hermas  "  probably  cannot  be  cleared  from  conscious  deceit ". 

*  Bigg,  Origins  of  Christianity,  p.  73  f.  Zahn  (Der  Hirt  des  Hermas  pp. 
365  ff.)  perceives  the  importance  of  the  problem  and  laments  the  lack  of 
interest  shown  in  it  to-day.  He  regards  the  visions  as  real  experiences 
of  the  author  and  thinks  the  Roman  Church  was  right  in  seeing  in  them 
a  divine  message,  but  refuses  to  discuss  the  question  of  their  permanent 
worth  (pp.  381  f.).  Harnack,  Zeitschrift  fiir  Kirchengeschichte  III,  p. 
369,  and  elsewhere.    Leipoldt,  op.  cit.,  p.  33,  n.  2,  and  others, 

^  Donaldson,  The  Apostolical  Fathers,  p.  326  ff.  Lightfoot,  Bibl.  Essays, 
p.  96.  Charteris,  Canonicity,  p.  xxiv.  Behm,  Ueber  den  Verfasser  der 
Schrift,  welche  den  Titel  "Hirt"  fuhrt.  J.  V.  B(artlet),  Encyc.  Srit. 
nth  ed.  Art  Hermas  favors  the  more  symbolic  view.     How  these  views 


498     THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

the  second  should  only  be  made  on  the  basis  of  far  stronger 
evidence  than  has  yet  been  adduced,  and  after  all  other  hy- 
potheses have  been  shown  to  be  insufficient.  Moreover,  as  the 
first  and  third  have  certain  points  of  contact  and  in  the  minds 
of  some  cannot  be  sharply  sundered,  we  may  state  our  prob- 
lem in  the  question:  Is  the  Shepherd  of  Hernias  an  apo- 
calypse or  an  allegory, — using  the  word  "  apocalypse  "  as 
significant,  not  of  the  real  nature  of  the  contents  of  the  work, 
but  of  its  claims.  And  should  it  appear  in  the  course  of  our 
examination  that  the  Shepherd  does  indeed  claim  to  be  a 
revelation,  then,  and  not  till  then,  will  eftierge  the  question  of 
the  justification  of  such  a  claim. 

There  is  no  difficulty  about  determining  the  date  of  the 
Shepherd  in  a  general  way.  Most  scholars  agree  that  it  was 
written  somewhere  between  97  and  140  A.D.,  or  thereabouts.^ 
But  when  we  seek  to  define  the  time  more  accurately,  a  diffi- 
culty presents  itself,  for  we  have,  curiously,  two  excellent 
pieces  of  testimony,  one  internal  and  one  external,  which  are 
hard  to  harmonize.  In  the  early  part  of  his  work''^  Hermas 
refers  in  quite  a  natural  unforced  manner  to  a  certain  Clement 
as  one  to  whom  had  been  committed  the  duty  of  correspond- 
ing with  foreign  churches,  and  apparently  as  one  of  the  pres- 
byters of  the  Church  at  Rome,  of  which  Hermas  was  a  member. 
Now  there  is  one  Clement  well  known  to  all  antiquity  as  the 
author  of  the  epistle  of  the  Church  of  Rome  to  that  at  Corinth, 
to  whom  this  seems  undoubtedly  to  point.  That  would  give 
a  date  somewhere  about  100  A.D.  The  other  piece  of  evidence 
is  that  contained  in  the  so-called  Muratori  Fragment,  which 
dates  from  about  the  end  of  the  second  century.  This  informs 
us  that  the  Shepherd  was  written  "  very  recently,  in  our  own 
times  ",  during  the  episcopate  of  Pius  of  Rome,  by  Pius's 
brother  Hermas.    This  would  give  a  date  about  150  A.D. 

have  received  modification  and  been  related  to  the  varying  opinions  con- 
cerning the  date  and  authorship  of  the  Shepherd  may  be  seen  in  the  table 
furnished  in  Gebhardt  und  Harnack,  Patrum  ApostoUcorum  Opera,  Fasc. 
III.,  p.  Ixxxiii,  n.  2. 

"For  the  few  who  go  outside  these  limits,  see  the  table  referred  to  in 
note  5. 

'Vis.  ii.  I. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  499 

Until  quite  recently  scholars  have  been  divided  according 
as  the  first  or  the  second  of  these  testimonials  seemed  to  them 
the  more  weighty,  and  ingenious  conjectures  have  been  pro- 
posed for  explaining  away  the  rejected  evidence.^  Lately, 
however,  as  an  outcome  of  discussion  concerning  the  unity  of 
the  work,  the  opinion  has  gained  ground  that  the  Shepherd 
was  not  produced  at  one  time  but  piecemeal  throughout  a 
number  of  years.  This  and  the  uncertainty  both  of  the  date 
of  Clement's  death  and  of  the  years  of  Pius'  episcopate  have 
made  it  possible  for  Prof.  Harnack  to  propose  a  compromise.^ 
He  thinks  now  that  the  earlier  portion  of  the  work  was  pro- 
duced about  no  A.D.  (possibly  in  the  3rd  year  of  Trajan) 
when  Clement  may  still  have  been  living,  and  that  the  book 
was  published  in  its  completed  form  about  135-140  A.D., 
when  Pius  may  have  been  bishop  of  Rome.  For  our  pur- 
poses we  need  not  enter  into  the  details  of  the  argument. 
We  shall  assume,  that  which  is  denied  by  very  few,  that  the 
work  was  in  existence  in  its  finished  form  about  the  year  135- 
or  140 — always  remembering  that  it  may  have  been  known 
earlier. 

Taking  this,  then,  as  the  date  when  the  Shepherd  was  given 
to  the  church,  we  ask:  how  was  it  received?  Remember  it 
is  not  a  small  book;  it  is  about  equal  in  size  to  our  first  two 
gospels  together.  Nor  was  it  published  in  a  corner,  but  at 
the  center  of  the  world,  in  the  city  of  Rome.  Such  a  work 
as  this,  if  regarded  as  divinely  inspired,  and  equal  to  the  Old 
Testament  in  authority,  must  have  made  a  considerable  stir, 
and  that  immediately,  and  in  the  whole  church.  And  yet 
there  is  not  one  particle  of  evidence  to  show  that  it  was  re- 
garded as  Scripture  or  in  any  sense  divine  during  the  30  or 
40  years  following  its  publication.  Not  until  we  come  down 
to  Irenaeus,  the  Muratori  Fragment,  Clement  of  Alexandria, 
Origen  and  Tertullian  is  it  quoted  and  referred  to  as  Scrip- 
ture or  of  divine  inspiration.  Nor  can  it  be  objected  that  this 
is  merely  an  argument  from  silence  and  so  of  no  cogency. 

*  Zahn,  in  Der  Hirt  des  Hennas  and  elsewhere,  has  been  the  strongest  de- 
fender of  the  earlier  date. 

"  Geschichte  d.  altchristlichen  Literatur  ii.,  i.  pp.  257  ff.,  where  a  brief 
review  of  the  argument  and  the  more  important  literature  may  be  found. 


500  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

For  there  were  events  in  Rome  at  this  time,  and  discussion  in 
the  church  concerning  authoritative  and  non-authoritative 
writings,  of  which  we  are  well  informed,  and  into  which  the 
Shepherd  undoubtedly  would  have  been  drawn  had  it  oc- 
cupied the  exalted  position  that  is  claimed  for  it.  The  result 
is  the  same  wherever  we  look — not  only  at  Rome  but  through- 
out the  whole  of  the  Christian  literature  coming  from  or 
dealing  with  this  period,  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence 
that  the  Shepherd  was  regarded  as  of  any  special  import- 
ance. 

It  was  at  this  time,  for  instance,  that  Marcion  founded  his 
school  at  Rome  and  formed  his  canon.  But  in  all  the  dis- 
cussions about  the  books  he  rejected  or  received,  there  is  no 
word  of  the  Shepherd,  although  we  are  informed  by  Ter- 
tullian^^  that  he  rejected  a  work  now  frequently  associated 
with  it  in  discussions  concerning  the  canon,  viz.,  the  Apo- 
calpyse  of  John.  This  should  be  decisive  alone.  If  the  Shep- 
herd were  regarded  by  either  party  as  divinely  inspired,  it  is 
incomprehensible  that  it  should  not  have  been  brought  into 
the  controversy  by  one  side  or  the  other.  ^^  The  Gnostic  Valen- 
tinus  was  also  established  in  Rome  at  this  time.  He  accepted 
all  the  Catholic  Scriptures,  as  we  are  informed  by  Tertullian,^^ 
and  turned  them  to  suit  his  own  ends  by  means  of  the  alle- 
gorical method  of  interpretation.  But  there  is  no  sign  that 
he  accepted,  or  so  used  the  Shepherd;  although  its  form  and 
contents  are  admirably  adapted  to  his  methods  and  results 
We  know  that  he  so  used  the  Apocalypse  of  John,^^  but 
neither  Irenaeus,  who  gives  us  this  information,  and  who  was 
acquainted  with  the  Shepherd,  nor  Tertullian,  who  would  not 
have  failed  to  attack  the  heretic  for  making  use  of  a  work 
which  he  himself  regarded  as  apocryphal  and  false,  contains 
the  slightest  indication  that  Valentinus  knew  anything  about 
the  Shepherd.    Hegesippus  was  in  Rome  at  this  time — during 

»MrfT/.  Marc.  IV.  5. 

"Harnack  (Gesch.  d.  altchrist.  Lit.  I.  i.,  p.  51),  remarks  without  com- 
ment, and  apparently  without  perceiving  the  import  of  his  remark :  "  Be- 
merkt  sei,  dass  sich  bei  den  Gnostikern  und  Marcion  keine  Spur  einer 
Benutzung  unseres  Buches  findet." 

"  Praescr.  c.  38.  "  Irenaeus,  Hacr.  i.  15. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  501 

the  episcopate  of  Anicetus.^^  Unfortunately,  the  only  piece 
of  evidence  we  have  from  his  pen  is  the  statement  preserved 
by  Eusebius  to  the  effect  that  some  of  the  so-called  apocrypha 
were  composed  in  his  (i.  e.  Hegesippus')  day  by  heretics. 
And  yet  even  this  is  important  coming  as  it  does  through 
Eusebius,  who  used  all  diligence  to  discover  the  origin  of  the 
books  disputed  or  rejected  in  his  own  time — one  of  which  was 
the  Shepherd  of  Hermas.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  as  the 
Shepherd  was  certainly  not  regarded  as  heretical  or  apocryphal 
in  the  days  of  Anicetus,  it  cannot  be  assumed  among  those 
referred  to  by  Hegesippus  in  this  passage;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  Eusebius  records  nothing  from  Hegesippus'  writings 
concerning  the  Shepherd,  the  probable  inference  is  that  he 
found  nothing  worthy  of  record;  certainly  it  was  not  one  of 
the  authoritative  books  of  the  Church.  Justin  Martyr,  too, 
was  acquainted  with  the  Rome  of  this  period,  and  speaks  in  a 
general  way  of  prophets  being  still  known  in  the  church,  ^^ 
but  in  all  his  writings  there  is  no  mention  of  Hermas  or  any 
reference  to  his  book.  The  answer  is  the  same  when  we  in- 
quire of  Celsus,  the  opponent  of  Christianity,  who  probably 
wrote  during  the  period  under  review.  He  shows  considerable 
acquaintance  with  Christianity  and  the  Christian  writings,  but 
there  is  no  sign  of  Hermas  or  his  Shepherd}^  Nor  does  the 
early  history  of  Montanism,  although  concerned  with  prophecy, 
afford  any  evidence.  It  is  not  until  the  time  of  Tertullian  that 
it  is  brought  into  the  discussion.^'''  It  is  true  that  a  relationship 
has  been  found  or  fancied  between  the  Shepherd  and  the  let- 
ters of  Ignatius,^*  that  of  Polycarp,^^  the  so-called  Second 

"  Eusebius,  HE.  iv.  22.  '"  Trypho,  c.  82. 

"  A  definite  reference  could  hardly  be  expected.  Celsus  knows  of  Chris- 
tian prophecy  in  his  own  time,  but  the  description  he  gives  of  it  does  not 
tally  with  the  contents  of  the  Shepherd.  See  Origen,  contra  Cels.  vi.  34  f., 
vii.  II. 

"  The  Anti-montanist  of  Eusebius  {HE.  v.  17),  gives  a  list  of  those  who 
prophesied  under  the  new  covenant.  Tv/o  names  are  added  to  those  known 
in  Scripture,  but  Hermas  is  not  one  of  them.  This  writer  is  later  how- 
ever than  the  period  we  are  discussing;  Bonwetsch  (Art.  Montanismus  in 
Herzog,  Realencycl,  third  ed.)  and  McGiffert  (Nicene  and  Post  Nicene 
Fathers,  Vol.  I.,  p.  233,  n.  32),  put  him  about  192  A,  D. 

"Zahn,  Ignatius  von  Antioch,  pp.  618  f.  ^^ Ibid.,  p.  620. 


502  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

Epistle  of  Clement,2o  the  Preaching  of  Peter,2i  Theophilus  of 
Antioch22  and  MeHto  of  Sardis,^^  but  these  are  mere  resem- 
blances^* and  prove  at  most  only  acquaintance  with  it.  None 
of  them  rises  to  the  rank  of  citation,  much  less  is  there  any- 
thing to  show  that  the  Shepherd  was  regarded  as  on  an  equality 
with  the  Old  Testament  or  divinely  inspired.  In  short,  there 
is  nothing  in  the  literature  of  this  period  to  show  that  the 
Shepherd  of  Hermas  commanded  any  more  respect  than  might 
be  givep  to  any  work  suitable  for  edification.^** 

In  and  after  the  last  quarter  of  the  second  century  we  find 
a  change  of  attitude  toward  the  Shepherd.  In  Gaul  Irenaeus 
quotes  it  as  "  Scripture  ",^^  thus  apparently  putting  it  on  a 
par  with  the  other  canonical  works.  And  yet  scholars  are  by 
no  means  agreed  that  this  is  his  intention.  It  is  difficult  to 
reconcile  Irenaeus'  usage  elsewhere,  and  his  emphasis  upon 
ap>ostolicity  as  a  prerequisite  of  canonicity,  with  such  an  ex- 
planation. It  is  noted  that  the  Shepherd  is  not  named  in  this 
quotation,^^  nor  is  it  quoted  anywhere  else  in  Irenaeus'  works 
as  far  as  we  know  them,  although  some  resemblances  are 
found  ;^*  moreover,  when  he  is  confessedly  marshalling  the 

**Harnack,  Theol.  Literaturzeitung,  1876,  Col.  104.  Cf.  Overbeck,  ibid., 
1877,  Col.  287  f. 

"  Hilgenfeld,  Hermae  Pastor,  p.  i  f.,  35. 

^  Harnack,  Patr.  Apostol.  Op.,  Fasc.  iii.,  note  to  Vis.  i,  6. 

^  Harnack,  Sit  sung  shericht  d.  Berliner  Akademie  d.  Wissenschaft,  1898, 
p.  5T7  ff. 

"  For  still  more  doubtful  resemblances  to  other  works,  see  Gebhardt  und 
Harnack,  Patr.  Apostol.  Op.  Fasc.  iii.,  p.  xliv  f.,  n.  2. 

^  Leipoldt,  op.  cit.,  pp.  33  ff.,  p.  38,  Zusatz  i,  gives  the  earliest  references 
to  the  Apocalypses.  A  convenient  list  of  early  citations  of  the  Shepherd 
may  be  found  in  Harnack's  Geschichte  d.  altchristl.  Literatur,  I.  i.,  pp.  51  ff,, 
and  a  fuller  discussion  of  them  in  the  various  editions  of  the  text,  par- 
ticularly that  of  Gebhardt  and  Harnack. 

^  Haer.  IV.  20,  2,  quoting  Mand.  I.,  i. 

^  It  is  a  possible  but  not  necessary  inference  that  Harnack  {Patr.  Apos- 
tol, Op.,  Fasc.  iii.  p.  xlv,  n.  i,  c.)  draws  from  this  fact,  viz.  that  the  book 
was  so  well  known  that  its  name  might  be  omitted. 

^  Harnack,  Geschichte  d.  altchr.  Lit.,  I,  i.,  p.  52,  gives  the  following  pas- 
sages :  Haer.  I,  13,  3  =  Mand.  xi.  3 ;  I,  21,  i  =  Mand.  I,  i ;  II,  30,  9  =  Sim. 
IX,  12,  8;  Frag.  Or.  29  (Harvey  II,  p.  494)  ■=  Sim.  VIII,  3,  2,  and  perhaps 
Haer.  IV,  30,  i  =  Sim.  i.  Cf.  Zahn,  Der  Hirt  des  Hermas,  p.  267,  n.  2. 
None  of  these  are  more  than  resemblances. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  503 

scriptural  arguments  against  the  Valentinians,^^  though  he 
quotes  freely  from  most  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament 
(as  we  know  it),  he  has  no  reference  to,  or  proof  drawn  from, 
the  Shepherd.  In  view  of  these  facts  some  scholars  have 
thought  that  Irenaeus  regarded  the  book  as  of  apostolic  ori- 
gin ;^^  others  have  supposed  that  he  may  have  used  the  term 
"  Scripture  "  in  this  place  in  the  general  sense  of  "  writing  ", 
or  that  he  made  a  mistake,  fancying  that  the  passage  he 
quoted  was  Scripture  ;^^  others  again  are  of  the  opinion  that 
Irenaeus,  while  not  ascribing  the  same  honor  to  the  Shepherd 
as  to  the  prophetical  and  apostolical  writings,  regarded  it 
nevertheless  as  authoritative.^^  It  is  not  necessary  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  investigation  to  decide  between  the  merits  of 
these  differing  views,  but  I  may  be  allowed  to  say  in  passing 
that  neither  the  view  that  Irenaeus  regarded  the  Shepherd,  as 
fully  canonical  and  of  apostolic  origin,  nor  that  which  asserts 
that  he  regarded  it  as  authoritative,  but  not  canonical  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word,  accounts  for  the  fact  that  he  quotes 
the  Shepherd  only  once  when  he  might  have  used  it  many 
times  to  his  advantage,  unless  it  be  assumed  that  he  was  not 
well  acquainted  with  the  contents  of  the  work.  Again  to  say 
that  he  was  mistakenly  of  the  impression  that  he  was  quoting 
from  some  canonical  book  is  to  take  refuge  in  a  conjecture 
which  is  incapable  of  proof ;  and  to  take  "  Scripture  "  in  any 
other  than  its  usual  technical  sense,  while  permitted  by  the 
usage  of  this  author  in  a  few  places, ^^  is  contrary  to  the  gen- 
eral custom  of  the  time,  and  unsuitable  in  the  passage  before 
us,  where  the  section  from  Hermas  is  used  for  the  purpose  of 
proving  a  doctrine  and  inserted  between  two  passages  from 

^  Haer.  Book  III. 

^  Hilgenfeld,  Apostolische  Vdter,  p.  180.  Zahn,  Geschichte  des  neutest. 
Kanons,  i.,  p.  335. 

^  Donaldson,  The  Apostolical  Fathers,  p.  319,  though  not  committing  him- 
self to  this  view.  Gregory,  Canon  and  Text  of  NT.,  p.  241  f.  But  he 
treats  the  evidence  too  cavalierly, 

^  Harnack,  Geschichte  d.  altchristl.  Literatur,  I,  i.,  p,  52 ;  Patr.  Apostol. 
Op.,  Fasc.  Ill,  p.  xlvi.  A  fuller  discussion  of  the  matter  may  be  found  in 
this  latter  place,  or,  where  a  different  conclusion  is  reached,  in  Zahn, 
Geschichte  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  I,  p.  333  f. 

''Haer.  Ill,  6,  4;  III,  17,  4;  V,  Preface. 


I 


504     THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

the  Old  Testament.  All  the  facts  of  the  case  would  be  ac- 
counted for  if  we  might  assume  that  the  Shepherd  had  only 
lately  come  into  Irenaeus'  hands,  that  he  regarded  it  as  can- 
onical and  of  apostolic  origin,  but  had  not  been  able  to  acquaint 
himself  intimately  with  it. 

In  North  Africa,  Tertullian,  in  his  treatise  De  oratione, 
not  only  shows  acquaintance  with  the  Shepherd,  but  also  in- 
forms us  indirectly  that  the  book  was  well  known  in  the 
church^*  and  that  some  Christians  regarded  it  as  normative 
in  matters  of  4evotional  conduct.  Whether  or  not  he  shared 
their  views  may  not  be  clear;  but  certainly  he  was  not  con- 
cerned to  argue  the  matter  at  this  time.^^  In  another  work, 
however,  after  he  had  been  converted  to  Montanism,  and 
found  the  Shepherd  in  conflict  with  his  rigoristic  views,  he 
calls  it  "  that  apocryphal  Shepherd  of  adulterers  ",^®  and  re- 
minds his  opponents  that  it  had  been  condemned  as  **  apo- 
cryphal and  false  by  every  council  of  the  churches,  even  your 
own  "j^''  and  that  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  (the  canonical  He- 
brews) was  more  received  among  the  churches  than  it  was.^^ 
It  is  sometimes  said  that  in  the  period  which  elapsed  between 
these  two  references  to  the  Shepherd  the  attitude  of  the  church 
generally  toward  the  work  had  undergone  a  change;  the  first 
coming  from  a  time  when  it  was  universally  regarded  as 
authoritative  and  inspired,  the  second  from  a  later  time  when 
the  apocalypses  were  being  excluded  from  the  canon.  Such  a 
sweeping  inference  is,  of  course,  unjustifiable;  we  cannot  say 
that  Tertullian  speaks  for  a  larger  section  of  the  church  than 

**  Harnack,  in  Pair.  Apostol.  Op.,  Fasc.  iii.  p.  xlviii,  n.  i,  a.  e.  agreeing 
with  Zahn  {G'dtt.  Gel.  Anz.  1873,  st.  29,  s.  1155),  concludes  that  in  Tertul- 
lian's  time  the  Shepherd  was  known  to  the  North  Africans  in  a  Latin 
Translation.  Since  then  Zahn  has  changed  his  opinion  and  affirms  that  it 
was  not  translated  until  later,  (Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  I,  345).  Cf. 
also  Harnack,  Das  Neue  Testament  urn  200,  p.  87. 

**  Tertullian,  de  orat.  16. 

"De  pudic.  20.  '^  Ihid.,  10. 

"Utique  receptior  apud  ecclesias  epistola  Barnabae  illo  apocrypho  Pas- 
tore  moechorum,  ibid.,  20.  I  cannot  find  any  justification  for  Gregory's 
translation,  "Would  that  the  letter  of  Barnabas  were  rather  received 
among  the  churches  than  that  apocryphal  Shepherd  of  adulterers  "  Canon 
and  Text  of  the  NT.,  p.  223. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  505 

that  with  which  he  was  famiHar.  But  we  are  bound  to  ascer- 
tain, if  we  can,  TertuUian's  attitude  toward  the  Shepherd,  and 
whether  he  changed  it,  and,  if  so,  why.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
of  his  later  attitude.  He  then  considered  the  work  "  apocry- 
phal and  false  "  and  so  unworthy  of  a  place  in  the  "  divine 
instrument ".  We  cannot  be  altogether  sure  what  he  meant 
by  "  apocryphal  "  here.  The  word  has  been  variously  under- 
stood in  different  periods.  The  earliest  meaning^^  appears  to 
have  been  "  excluded  from  public  use  in  the  Church  ",  with- 
out reference  either  to  origin  or  contents  of  the  book  ex- 
cluded. Soon,  however,  it  came  to  denote  not  the  fact  but 
the  grounds  for  such  exclusion;  that  is  to  say,  it  stigmatized 
a  work  as  untrue  with  respect  either  to  its  contents  or  to  its 
origin^^  or  both.  But  though  we  know  that  these  several  con- 
notations existed  in  the  early  centuries,  we  cannot  always  be 
sure  in  which  of  them  a  writer  uses  the  word.  It  is  indeed 
sufficiently  clear,  from  the  opprobrious  terms  Tertullian  heaps 
up,  that  he  condemns  the  teaching  of  the  Shepherd  out  and 
out,  but  we  should  like  to  know  whether  by  "  apocryphal  "  he 
means  to  imply  that  the  work  is  also  not  what  it  claims  to  be 
with  respect  to  origin ;  and  of  this  we  cannot  be  certain. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  an  examination  of  the  earlier  reference. 
Some  of  the  North  Africans  apparently  regarded  it  as  im- 
portant to  lay  aside  their  cloaks  during  prayer  and  to  seat 
themselves  afterwards.  In  justification  of  the  first  of  these 
they  appealed  to  2  Tim.  iv.  13,  and  for  the  second  to  the  fifth 
vision  of  the  Shepherd.  Tertullian  treats  both  customs  and 
both  passages  appealed  to  in  the  same  way.  Such  customs 
he  says  are  irrational,  superstitious,  and  savor  of  idolatry,  and 
such  an  interpretation  of  Scripture  childish,  and  leads  to  the 
foolishest  consequences  if  consistently  applied.  Now  while  it 
is  true  that  this  argument  says  nothing  either  of  the  canonicity 
of  Paul's  letter  or  the  uncanonicity  of  the  Shepherd,  still  as 

^  See  Zahn,  Geschichte  des  N eutestamentl.  Kanons,  I,  p.  125  ff,  E. 
Schiirer  in  Herzog,  Realencyclopaedie,  ed.  3,  vol.  I,  p.  622  ff. 

*"  To  Augustine  "  apocryphal "  meant  that  the  origin  of  a  book  was 
"hidden"  or  unknown,  De  civit.  Dei.  xv.  23,  4.  Harnack,  Patr.  Apostol. 
Op.,  Ill,  p.  xlix.,  n.  I,  b.,  thinks  Tertullian  uses  it  with  reference  to 
authorship. 


5o6     THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

Tertullian  did  regard  Paul's  epistles  as  canonical,  and  as  the 
North  Africans  to  whom  he  was  writing  seemingly  regarded 
the  Shepherd  as  equally  authoritative  in  matters  of  conduct,  it 
is  often  affirmed  that  the  African  father  would  not  have  lost 
this  opportunity  to  correct  the  erroneous  estimation  placed 
upon  the  latter,  had  he  been  at  the  time  of  this  writing  of  the 
same  opinion  that  he  was  when  he  wrote  De  pudicitia.  More- 
over, it  is  noted  that  he  here  calls  the  Shepherd  "  Scriptura  ". 
It  is  true  that  he  does  this  also  in  the  later  reference,  but  in 
that  case  it  is, obvious  that  he  does  so  sarcastically  with  refer- 
ence to  the  attitude  of  those  who  would  appeal  to  it,  and  that 
he  may  contrast  it  with  the  true  Scriptures.^^  But  in  the 
former  case  there  is,  it  is  said,  no  sign  of  sarcasm,  nor  any- 
thing to  show  that  he  differed  from  his  correspondents  in  his 
estimate  of  the  Shepherd,  or  that  he  regarded  it  as  less  binding 
than  the  writings  of  Paul.'*^ 

"  At  ego  eius  pastoris  scripturas  haurio  qui  non  potest  frangi," 
^'Harnack  {Patr.  Apost.  Op.,  Fasc.  iii.,  p.  xlix)  thinks  that  Tertullian 
at  this  time  regarded  the  Shepherd  as  "  Scripture  "  but  as  inferior  to  the 
prophets  and  the  apostles  ("  sed  minime  audeo  dicere  Carthaginienses  turn 
temporis  Pastorem  inter  scripturas  prophetarum  et  apostolorum  recen- 
suisse").  He  refers  to  Tertullian's  treatment  of  the  Book  of  Enoch  and 
suggests  that  the  Shepherd  may  have  had  a  place  at  the  close  of  the  New 
Testament  after  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  But,  in  Tertullian's  treat- 
ment of  the  Book  of  Enoch  {de  cult,  fern.  I,  3;  II,  10,  de  idol.  15),  there 
is  every  sign  that  he  himself  regarded  this  work  as  of  equal  authority  with 
other  Old  Testament  Scriptures;  he  calls  it  "Scriptura",  cites  it  by  way  of 
proof,  answers  criticisms  of  its  authorship  and  transmission,  says  it  is 
vouched  for  by  the  Apostle  Jude,  and  tries  to  explain  why  it  was  unjustly 
rejectedby  the  Jews.  Nor  can  the  statement  "  et  legimus  omnem  scripturam 
aedificationi  habilem  divinitus  inspirari  "  {de  cult.  fern.  I,  3,  2  Tim.  iii.  16), 
be  taken  to  explain  Tertullian's  attitude  toward  the  Shepherd,  for  Tertul- 
lian is  speaking  here  only  of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures,  as  was  St. 
Paul  before  him^ — a  thing  that  is  often  overlooked  in  discussing  this  passage 
(on  the  importance  of  this  interpretation  of  Paul's  words  for  the  history 
of  the  New  Testament  canon,  see  Harnack,  Das  Neue  Test,  um  das  Jahr 
200,  pp.  25,  39  f .,  and  opposed  to  him  Leipoldt,  op.  cit.,  p.  40) . 

With  regard  to  the  relative  value  of  the  Shepherd  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  the  matter  is  somewhat  different.  Harnack  is  here 
following  Credner  {Geschichte  d.  neutest.  Kanons)  and  Ronsch  {Das  neue 
Testament  Tertullians) ,  in  the  view  that  Tertullian  had  in  his  New  Tes- 
tament as  a  kind  of  appendix,  some  works  which  were  to  some  degree 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  507 

If  this  be  the  correct  explanation  of  this  passage  we  have  to 
ask  further  on  what  grounds  Tertullian  granted  such  a  high 

inspired  and  authoritative  but  on  a  lower  plane  than  others.  Ronsch 
gives  as  the  names  of  these  the  Epistle  of  Peter  ad  Ponticos  (i  Peter), 
the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  to  the  Hebrews  (Hebrews),  the  Epistle  of  Jude, 
and  the  Epistle  of  the  Presbyter  (2  John).  But,  without  going  into  details, 
it  is  hard  to  believe,  after  reading  Scorp.  12  and  14,  and  de  orat.  20,  that 
Tertullian  set  the  known  writings  of  Peter  in  any  respect  below  those  of 
Paul;  the  Epistle  of  Jude  is  referred  to  only  once  {de  cult.  fern.  I,  3),  but 
then  as  a  work  of  an  Apostle  and  as  authoritative;  and  2  John  is  neither 
mentioned  nor  used  by  the  North  African  Father  {Ronsch,  p.  572,  see  Zahn, 
Gesch.  d.  NT.  Kanons,  Vol.  I,  p.  in,  n.  i,  pp.  304  ff.,  pp.  320  f.). 

Tertullian's  attitude  toward  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  requires  closer 
examination.  In  his  treatise  de  pudic,  after  he  had  passed  in  review  the 
teaching  of  the  Evangelists,  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  Paul  and  the  other 
Apostles,  concluding  with  the  Revelation  and  First  Epistle  of  St.  John, 
Tertullian  draws  the  argument  to  a  close  {de  pud.  20),  and  then  adds,  "1 
wish  however  to  subjoin  in  addition,  redundantly,  the  testimony  also  of  a 
certain  companion  of  the  Apostles,  which  is  well  adapted  for  confirming, 
by  nearest  right,  the  teaching  of  the  masters  "  (volo  tamen  ex  redundantia 
alicuius  etiam  comitis  apostolorum  testimonium  superducere  idoneum  con- 
firmandi  de  proximo  jure  disciplinam  magistrorum  (Ed.  Oehler).  He  then 
introduces  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  as  the  work  of  Barnabas  for  whom 
Paul  vouched,  and  adds,  "  and  at  all  events  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  is 
more  received  among  the  churches  than  that  apocryphal  Shepherd  of 
adulterers "  (et  utique  receptior  apud  ecclesias  epistola  Barnabae  illo 
apocrypho  Pastore  moechorum).  He  then  quotes  Heb.  vi.,  4-8.  There 
are  two  questions  raised  by  this  passage:  the  first  concerns  Tertullian's 
estimate  of  Hebrews,  the  second  the  comparative  value  of  the  Shepherd 
and  Hebrews.  With  regard  to  the  first  of  these  it  is  evident  that  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  according  to  Tertullian,  was  not  in  itself  possessed 
of  divine  authority.  This  appears  from  the  formal  conclusion  of  his 
argument  based  on  the  Apostolic  teaching  {disciplina  apostolorum  proprie) 
before  he  turns  to  it,  from  the  express  statements  that  he  uses  it  only  to 
confirm  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles  and  that  it  is  excessive  {ex  redun- 
dantia), from  the  fact  that  he  does  not  ascribe  but  rather  denies  aposto- 
licity  to  it,  and  that  he  never  calls  it  "  Scripture  "  (he  uses  titulus  instead 
or  refers  to  it  by  name).  The  view,  which  Zahn  thinks  possible,  {Gesch. 
d.  N cutest.  Kanons,  Vol.  I,  p.  291)  that  Tertullian  himself  placed  a  higher 
estimate  on  the  work  than  is  here  apparent,  and  did  not  cite  it  among  the 
writings  of  the  New  Testament  only  because  it  was  not  universally  re- 
ceived, and  therefore  any  argument  drawn  from  it  not  universally  valid, 
while  commending  itself  for  several  reasons  is  incapable  of  proof.  Ac- 
cording to  the  evidence  before  us  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  was  outside 
of  Tertullian's  canon,  and  enjoyed  only  that  amount  of  favor  which  was 


5o8     THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

place  to  the  Shepherd.  In  the  first  place  it  cannot  be  thought 
that  he  accepted  it  without  having  some  opinion  of  its  author- 
ship ;  for  he  denounces  strongly  all  works  that  do  not  "  bind 

due  to  the  writings  of  a  man  who  was  approved  of  St.  Paul  and  God.  But 
what  does  Tertullian  mean  by  saying  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  was 
"more  received  among  the  churches"  than  was  the  S  hep  herd  f  Does 
"  receptior  apud  ecclesias  "  mean  that  it  was  more  highly  esteemed,  or  that 
it  was  received  as  canonical  by  more  churches?  Ronsch  understands  it 
to  mean  both  {Op.  cit.,  p.  565)  ;  Harnack  to  mean  one  or  the  other,  he 
does  not  say  which  {Pair.  Apost.  Op.  Ill,  p.  xlix  f.,  n.  i,  c),  but  in 
stating  that  the  Shepherd  seems  to  have  had  a  plag;  at  the  end  of  the  New 
Testament  after  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  {ibid.,  p.  xlviii.  f.,  n.  i  e) 
he  favors  the  former,  and  in  another  place  (Texte  und  Untersuchungen 
V,  i.,  p.  59),  the  latter.  Zahn  holds  firmly  to  the  latter  interpretation  (Gesch. 
d.  neutest.  Kanons,  I,  pp.  121,  n.  292  f.)  on  the  ground  that  "  receptus" 
is  not  capable  of  degrees,  and  of  the  presence  of  the  plural  "ecclesias". 
So  also  Credner,  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  p.  117.  But  neither  of  these 
explanations  is  free  from  difficulty.  By  the  first  Tertullian  is  made  to  dis- 
agree with  his  other  statement  in  this  same  treatise,  that  all  the  councils  of 
the  church  had  declared  the  Shepherd  "  apocryphal  and  false  ".  To  accuse 
him  of  exaggerating  in  the  latter  remark  (Harnack,  Texte  u.  Untersuchun- 
gen, V,  i.,  p.  59,  Weiss,  Einleitung  in  d.  NT.,  3rd  ed.  p.  74)  is  unwarranted, 
and,  as  we  shall  see  later  these  words  may  express  literally  a  natural 
interpretation  of  a  Roman  statement  concerning  the  Shepherd.  Zahn's 
argument  is  unsatisfactory  because  it  does  violence  to  the  Latin.  Had 
Tertullian  wished  to  say  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  was  received 
by  more  churches  than  the  Shepherd  we  should  expect  "receptus  apud 
plures  ecclesias".  It  seems  to  be  true  that  "receptus"  was  used  as 
terminus  technicus  to  denote  the  inclusion  of  a  work  among  the  canonical 
books,  and  that  in  this  sense  it  was  incapable  of  degree.  But  the  word 
was  not  used  exclusively  in  this  connection,  and  when  not  it  could  be 
compared  (see  instances  in  Zahn  loc.  cit.).  It  is  in  this  latter  sense  that 
the  word  is  used  in  the  passage  before  us.  The  discussion  is  not  about 
canonical  works,  but  about  two,  both  of  which  Tertullian  definitely  ex- 
cludes from  the  Scriptures.  With  this  in  mind  the  argument  in  this 
chapter  of  de  pudicitia  is  both  clear  and  consistent  with  other  parts  of  the 
treatise.  I  have  now,  says  Tertullian  in  effect,  concluded  my  argument 
from  the  New  Testament  Scriptures,  but  I  wish  to  add  the  testimony  of 
one  other,  which  may  not  be  used  in  the  argument  proper  but  is  of  value 
in  confirming  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles,  for  its  author  was  their  com- 
rade. I  refer  to  an  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  a  man  commended  by  God  and  the 
Apostle  Paul.  And  though  he  is  not  an  authority,  you  must  at  least  ac- 
knowledge that  his  Epistle  is  recognized  as  of  more  value  by  the  churches 
than  that  apocryphal  Shepherd  of  adulterers  which  has  been  condemned 
by  all  the  councils  of  the  churches. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  509 

themselves  by  full  title  and  due  profession  of  author  ",*^  And 
it  is  equally  clear  that  he  received  only  such  works  as  were  of 
apostolic  origin,  that  is  to  say,  composed  either  by  Apostles  or 
apostolic  men.^^  We  would  therefore  conclude  that  Tertullian 
regarded  Hermas  as  a  disciple  of  the  Apostles.  But  if  this  be 
so  the  question  immediately  thrusts  itself  upon  us,  why  does  he 
not  use  the  Shepherd  more  frequently  in  his  writings  ?  To  this 
no  certain  answer  can  be  given,  though  it  may  be  pointed  out 
that  Paul's  Epistles  to  Titus  and  Philemon,  the  First  Epistle  of 
Peter  and  that  of  Jude,  although  undoubtedly  belonging  to 
Tertullian's  canon,  are  referred  to  no  more  frequently  or 
hardly  so  than  is  the  Shepherd. 

But  this  view,  although  held  in  slightly  differing  forms  by 
many  scholars,  appears  to  me  to  be  wrong  from  beginning  to 
end.  When  the  Christians  of  North  Africa,  in  defence  of 
their  superstitious  practices  of  laying  aside  their  cloaks  before 
prayer  and  of  sitting  down  after  it,  appealed  to  the  state- 
ments that  Paul  had  left  his  cloak  behind  him  at  Troas  (pre- 
sumably having  laid  it  aside  at  prayer)  and  that  Hermas  had 
sat  down  on  his  bed  after  prayer,  the  answer  that  sprang  to 
Tertullian's  lips,  as  it  would  to  those  of  any  other  sensible 
Christian,  was  that  such  a  use  of  Scripture  was  childish,  silly, 
superstitious,  and  incapable  of  being  indulged  without  en- 
tailing ridiculous  results.  More  was  unnecessary.  To  argue 
the  question  of  the  authority  or  canonicity  of  the  Shepherd 
would  not  have  been  to  the  point.  On  the  contrary  it  would 
have  weakened  the  argument,  as  it  might  be  taken  to  imply 
that  had  the  Shepherd  been  authoritative,  such  a  use  of  it 
would  have  been  justified.  Tertullian  here  as  elsewhere  sees 
the  main  issue  clearly  and  sticks  to  it.  And  yet  he  has  not 
left  us  without  at  least  a  hint  of  his  estimate  of  Hermas  and 
his  book.  He  introduces  them  with  the  words  "  that  Hermas 
whose  scripture  is  generally  called  the  Shepherd  "^^     This  is 

''  Marc.  IV,  2. 

**  To  Tertullian  apostolic  men  (apostoHci)  were  those  who  had  associated 
with  and  learned  from  the  Apostles,  Marc.  IV,  2;  Praescr.  32.  Cf.  also 
Praescr.  21  ff. ;  30;  44;  and  what  he  says  against  works  of  post-apostolic 
date,  Praescr.  30. 

*'  Quid  enim,  si  Hermas  ille  cuius  scriptura  fere  Pastor  inscribitur,  etc. 
De  orat.  16. 


I 


Sio 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


not  the  way  one  introduces  a  well  known  and  acknowledgedly 
canonical  book.  The  demonstrative  "  that  "  pointing  to  Her- 
mas  with  quite  particular  emphasis  is  hard  to  account  for  un- 
less we  find  in  it,  as  several  scholars  do,*®  the  note  of  con- 
tempt. The  words  "  that  Hermas  "  find  their  parallel  in  "  that 
Shepherd  of  adulterers  ",  and  the  delicate  sarcasm  of  the  words 
"  whose  (i.  e.,  Hermas')  scripture  "  is  perceived  at  once  when 
they  are  put  beside  those  others,  wHich  we  have  heard  Tertul- 
lian  using  elsewhere  in  discussing  the  Shepherd,  "  but  I  quaff 
the  scriptures  of  that  Shepherd  who  cannot  be  broken  ".^"^ 
We  are  compelled  therefore  to  the  conclusion  that,  though 
some  of  his  countrymen  estimated  the  Shepherd  very  highly, — 
exactly  how  highly  we  cannot  say  for  lack  of  evidence, — Ter- 
tullian  at  no  period  of  his  life  of  which  we  have  any  knowl- 
edge shared  their  views.    He  despised  it. 

In  Alexandria  Clement  knew  the  Shepherd  and  was  fond 
of  it.  He  quotes  it  freely  and  shows  beyond  possibility  of 
doubt  that  he  believed  it  to  contain  a  genuine  revelation.  He 
speaks  of  "  the  Shepherd,  the  Angel  of  Repentance  "  that 
spoke  to  Hermas,*^  of  the  '*  Power  that  spoke  divinely  to 
Hermas  by  revelation  "  *®  or  '^  the  Power  that  appeared  to 
Hermas  in  the  vision  in  the  form  of  the  Church  "  f^  more 
frequently  he  cites  it  simply  as  the  ''  Shepherd '\^^  He  ap- 
peals to  it  as  proof  of  Christian  teaching  associating  it  with 
the  books  of  our  Bible,  he  even  interprets  one  passage  alle- 
gorically.^^  And  yet  in  spite  of  all  this  there  are  few  who 
venture  to  affirm  that  Clement  puts  the  Shepherd  on  a  par  with 
the  Gospels  and  writings  of  the  Apostles.  It  is  noted  that  he 
never  calls  Hermas  an  Apostle  as  he  does  Barnabas  and  Clem- 

^'So  Credner,  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  p.  117;  Oehler,  Tertull.  op. 
Vol.  I,  p.  567,  not.  c ;  Gregory,  Canon  and  Text  of  the  NT.,  p.  242. 

"See  note  41.  *^  Strom.  {.,  17,  85.  *' Strom,  i.,  29,  181. 

**  Strom,  vi.,  15,  131,  cf.  Strom,  ii.,  i,  3. 

"  The  passages  have  been  gathered  by  Harnack,  Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit., 
I.  i.,  p.  53. 

"Harnack  (Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit.,  I.  i.,  p.  53).  Kutter,  (Clemens 
Alexandrinus  und  das  Neue  Testament,  p.  86)  would  weaken  the  force  of 
this,  by  showing  what  Clement  does  is  to  interpret  allegorically  an  act 
of  Hermas.  But  in  any  case  Clement  is  dealing  with  a  passage  out  of  the 
Shepherd. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  511 

ent  of  Rome,  that  he  does  not  cite  his  book  as  "  Scripture  "  as 
he  does  for  example  the  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles.^ ^ 
It  is  pointed  out  that  he  regarded  Greek  Philosophy  and  the 
oracles  of  the  Sybil  as  in  a  sense  divine.^ ^  And  the  testimony 
of  Eusebius  is  called  to  show  that  in  the  Hypotyposes  in  which 
he  commented  upon  all  the  books  of  the  canonical  Scriptures 
not  omitting  the  disputed  books,  which  are  more  nearly  de- 
fined as  Jude,  the  other  Catholic  Epistles,  Barnabas  and  the 
Apocalpse  of  Peter,  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas  is  not  in- 
cluded.^ ^  It  has  been  argued  too  that,  as  the  final  authority 
for  Clement  was  the  Lord  and  his  Apostles^  ^  and  as  the 
apostolic  time  ended  for  him  in  the  days  of  Nero,^'''  he  could 
not  have  regarded  a  work,  which  he  must  have  known  to  be  of 
later  origin,  as  on  a  par  with  the  writings  of  the  Apostles.^^ 
It  does  not  come  within  the  scope  of  our  investigation  to  in- 
quire more  definitely  into  the  merits  of  these  views.  Our  pur- 
pose is  accomplished  when  we  have  ascertained  that  Clement 
as  a  matter  of  fact  did  regard  the  Shepherd  as  at  least  con- 
taining a  divine  revelation ;  though  it  is  not  unimportant  to  note 
that  of  all  the  Christian  writings  appealed  to  by  Clement  as 

'^'Kutter,  Clemens  Alex.  u.  d.  Neue  Test.,  p.  139  f.  On  the  use  oiypaip-^ 
in  a  broad  sense  and  the  extension  of  the  term  apostolic  to  include  the 
later  years  of  John's  life  and  also  Clement  of  Rome  and  Barnabas,  ibid., 
pp.  130,  136. 

^*  Strom,  vi.,  5,  43.  cf.  Protr.  vi.  72;  viii,  77,  et  al.  See  Eickhoff,  Das 
Neue  Testament  des  Clem.  Alex.  p.  7.    Kutter,  op.  cit.  140  f, 

'*'  Eusebius,  HE.  vi.,  14.  Photius'  statement  {Bihl.  cod.  109)  that  the 
Hypotyposes  zovQvtd  only  Genesis,  Exodus,  the  Psalms,  the  Pauline  Epis- 
tles, the  Catholic  Epistles  and  Ecclesiastes,  cannot  stand  in  the  face  of 
Eusebius'  explicit  reference  to  the  Apocalypse  of  Peter.  Nor  is  the  omis- 
sion of  the  Shepherd  acounted  for  by  saying  that  Eusebius  has  probably 
omitted  it  through  accident  (Harnack,  Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit.  I.  i.,  p.  53) 
or  that  Clement  did  not  comment  on  it  because  of  its  length  (Zahn,  Gesch. 
d.  neutest.  Kanons,  i.,  p.  330).  Nor  does  Eusebius'  failure  to  mention  the 
Shepherd  among  the  works  used  by  Clement  (HE.  vi.,  13)  destroy  the 
argument. 

^  Strom,  i.,  i,  11.  '^''  Strom,  vii.,  17,  106. 

°*  Kutter,  op.  cit.,  pp.  108,  128  ff.,  139  f.,  cf.  Kunze,  Glaubensregel  etc., 
pp.  40,  138.  But  it  is  by  no  means  sure  that  Clement  was  as  well  informed 
of  the  origin  of  the  Shepherd  as  was  the  author  of  the  Muratori  Fragment, 
as  Kutter  assumes. 


512  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

authoritative,  this  is  the  only  one  for  which  apostolical  origin 
was  not  claimed  in  one  way  or  another;  and  the  difficulties 
which  arise  in  connection  with  his  use  of  the  Shepherd  would 
be  to  a  large  extent  removed,  and  his  procedure  shown  to  be 
consistent  with  his  own  principles,  if  we  might  assume  that 
for  which  there  is  nothing  pro  or  contra  in  his  writings, 
namely,  that  he  thought  this  book  to  be  the  product  of  the 
golden  age  of  the  Apostles. 

Origen,  the  successor  of  Clement  in  Alexandria,  regards 
the  Shepherd  «ls  "  very  useful  and  divinely  inspired  ",^®  and 
frequently  adduced  proof  from  it  as  from  any  other  Scrip- 
ture. But  he  also  informs  us  that  the  book  was  not  univer- 
sally received  but  even  despised  by  some.^^  From  him  also 
we  have  a  definite  statement  concerning  the  authorship  and 
date  of  the  Shepherd,  namely  that  it  was  written  by  the  Her- 
mas  to  whom  the  Apostle  Paul  sends  greetings  in  his  Epistle  to 
the  Romans  f^  that  is  to  say  he  refers  it  to  apostolic  times,  the 
period  which  produced  all  the  other  canonical  books.  ^^  Nor 
can  we  doubt  that  the  opinion  of  Origen  with  respect  to  the 
authorship  of  the  Shepherd  was  shared  by  a  large  proportion 
of  the  Alexandrian  church.^^ 

Among  the  Roman  writers  of  this  period  we  find  no  such 
high  respect  for  the  Shepherd  as  we  have  found  in  Alex- 
andria.   Hippolytus  especially,  than  whom  none  was  better  ac- 

"Valde  mihi  utilis  videtur  et  ut  puto  divinitus  inspirata.  In  Rom. 
(xvi.  14),  com.  X.  31. 

'^KaTaippovo^yuevoSf  De  princip.  iv.  ii;  cf.  In  Psalm.  S electa,  horn.  i.  in 
Psalm.  37;  In  Ezech.  xxviii.  13,  hom..  xiii.  These  and  other  references  in 
Hamack,  Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit.,  I.  i.,  pp.  53  ff. 

"^  In  Rom.  xvi.  14,  com.  x.  31,  "  Puto  tamen,  quod  Hermas  iste  sit  scriptor 
libelli  illius  qui  Pastor  appellatur  ". 

•*  Cf.  Origen  in  Euseb.  HE.  vi.,  25,  12  f. 

^  See  Zahn,  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  \.,  pp.  330  flf,  where  he  retracts 
his  earlier  statements.  Harnack  (Patr.  apost.  op.  iii.,  p.  Ivii)  would  have 
us  believe  that  Origen  is  expressing  only  his  own  opinion  when  he  ascribes 
the  Shepherd  to  the  Hermas  of  Rom.  xvi.  14.  It  may  be  true,  as  he  asserts, 
that  Origen  does  not  claim  to  have  any  traditional  basis  for  this  opinion 
and  never  calls  Hermas  virum  apostolicum,  but  it  is  hard  to  believe  that 
a  man  of  such  scholarly  methods  as  Origen  was  should  make  such  a  state- 
ment without  basis  for  it. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  513 

quainted  with  the  affairs  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  who  had 
plenty  of  opportunities  to  use  it,  does  not  once  mention  by- 
name, or  quote  from,  the  work.^^  And  yet  there  is  asserted 
to  be  reason  for  beHeving  that  here  too  the  book  was  regarded 
as  inspired  and  authoritative  and  on  a  par  with  other  canonical 
writings.  I  shall  briefly  review  what  evidence  there  is.  (i) 
Tertullian,  in  a  passage  already  referred  to,  has  in  mind  that 
the  Shepherd  is  opposed  to  his  montanistic  views  and  defends 
himself  against  its  teachings.  "  But  I  would  yield  to  you  ", 
he  says,  "  if  the  Scripture  called  the  Shepherd,  which  alone 
loves  adulterers,  were  worthy  of  a  place  in  the  divine  instru- 
ment,— if  it  had  not  been  adjudged  among  the  apocryphal  and 
false  writings  by  every  council  of  the  churches  even  your 
own  '\^^  As  Tertullian  throughout  this  treatise  has  the  bishop 
of  Rome  in  mind,  the  Pontifex  Maximus  as  he  sarcastically 
calls  him  in  the  initial  chapter,  it  has  been  inferred  that  the 
Roman  had  appealed  to  the  Shepherd  in  defence  of  his  laxer 
administration  of  disciplined^  The  inference  is  possible  but 
but  by  no  means  necessary.  Tertullian  had  to  defend  himself 
not  only  from  the  actual  arguments  of  the  past  but  also  from 
the  possible  ones  of  the  future,  against  attacks  not  only  from 
Rome  but  also  from  nearer  home,  where  as  we  have  seen  the 
Shepherd  was  in  high  repute.  The  words  "  your  churches  '* 
refer  of  course  to  the  Catholic  churches,  not  to  those  of  any 
particular  locality.^^  (2)  The  next  witness  is  the  so-called 
Liberian  Catalogue  of  the  bishops  of  Rome,  which  has  the  fol- 
lowing note  under  the  name  Pius  :  "  During  his  episcopate  his 
brother  Hermes  wrote  the  book  in  which  is  contained  the  com- 
mand which  the  angel  enjoined  upon  him  when  he  came  to  him 
in  the  garb  of  a  shepherd  ".^^    This  catalogue  in  its  completed 

**  Bonwetsch,  Zu  den  Komm.  Hippolyts.  Texte  u.  Untersuchungen 
N.  F.  Vol.  i.,  2,  p.  26,  finds  a  couple  of  resemblances. 

^  De  pudic.  10.  "  Sed  cederem  tibi  si  scriptura  Pastoris  qui  sola  moechos 
amat  divino  instrumento  meruisset  incidi,  si  non  ab  omni  concilio  eccle- 
siarum  6tiam  vestrarum  inter  apocrypha  et  falsa  iudicaretur ". 

''So  Harnack,  Gesch,  d.  altchristl.  Lit.,  I.  i,  52,  and  others. 

"  According  to  Harnack,  Tertullian  could  not  be  referring  to  Roman  or 
Italian  councils  (Texte  u.  Untersuch.  V.  i.,  p.  59). 

•* "  Sub   hujus   episcopatu    frater   ejus   Hermes    librum    scripsit   in   quo 


I 


514    THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

form  belongs  to  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  and  therefore 
lies  outside  the  period  of  our  investigation;  but  there  is  good 
reason  for  supposing  that  the  earlier  part  of  it,  down  to  231 
A.D.,  was  composed  a  century  or  more  earlier  and  is  from  the 
pen  of  Hippolytus  himself.®®  But  even  the  earlier  part  did  not 
leave  the  hand  of  Hippolytus  in  its  present  form.  Some  later 
editor  or  continuator  added  chronological  synchronisms  at  least 
(the  names  of  contemporary  consuls,  Emperors,  &c.),  and 
perhaps  also  this  and  one  other  note  (concerning  the  death  of 
the  Apostle  Peter).  According  to  the^.table  of  contents  ap- 
pended to  one  of  the  recensions  of  Hippolytus'  Chronica  we 
should  find  in  it  Nomina  episcoporum  Romae  et  quis  quot  annis 
praefuit?^  The  natural  inference  is  that  all  except  the  names 
and  the  number  of  years  was  added  later.  Still,  while  express- 
ing doubt  on  the  matter  both  Lightfoot  and  Hamack  think  it 
probable  that  the  notice  concerning  Hermas  was  in  the  original 
work,  the  former  because  it  "  seems  intended  to  discredit  the 
pretensions  of  that  work  to  a  place  in  the  canon  and  therefore 
would  probably  be  written  at  a  time  when  sCich  pretensions 
were  still  more  or  less  seriously  entertained  ",  the  motive  being 
"  the  same  as  with  the  author  of  the  Muratorian  Canon  who 
has  a  precisely  similar  note  '\'^^  the  latter  because  "  just  at  Hip- 
polytus' time  the  Shepherd  was  excluded  from  the  sacred  col- 
lection in  many  churches  and  this  notice  apparently  has  refer- 
ence to  the  controversy  [involved]  ".'^^  It  is  true  that  the 
Liberian  Catalogue  agrees  with  the  Muratori  Fragment  in  as- 
cribing the  Shepherd  to  a  certain  Hermas  (or  Hermes),  the 
brother  of  Pius,  but  it  is  equally  important  to  note  that  it  de- 
finitely asserts  that  it  is  a  genuine  revelation,  which  the  Mura- 
tori Fragment  does  not ;  and  it  is  highly  improbable  that  Hip- 
poltyus,  had  he  entertained  this  view  of  the  work,  would  have 
made  no  mention  of,  or  citation  from,  it  in  his  other  works. 

mandatum  continetur  quod  ei  praecepit  angelus  cum  venit  ad  ilium  in 
habitu  pastoris." 

"See  discussion  in  Lightfoot,  Apostol.  Fathers,  I.  i.,  pp.  253  ff.  and 
a  summary  of  results  in  Hamack,  Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit.,  II.  i.,  pp. 
144  ff. 

*•  Lightfoot,  Loc.  cit.,  p.  260.  '^  Ibid.,  p.  261   f. 

"Hamack,  Loc.  cit.,  p.  150. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  515 

Moreover,  if  the  purpose  of  the  author  of  this  notice  was  to 
contribute  something  toward  the  settlement  of  the  controversy 
concerning  the  canonicity  of  the  book,  he  chose  a  very  inap- 
propriate method.  The  statement  that  the  book  dates  from  the 
days  of  Pius  does  indeed  impHcitly  deny  apostoHcity  to  the 
work,  but  the  affirmation  of  its  prophetic  character  definitely 
asserts  its  inspiration.'''^  "^^ 

"  The  singular  mandatum  also  is  suspicious.  Mandata  (pi.)  might  by  a 
stretch  be  made  to  cover  the  whole  book,  but  not  its  singular.  The  ques- 
tion rises  what  is  meant  thereby.  The  explanation  of  Zahn  (Hirt  des 
Hermas,  p.  25  f.)  would  solve  the  problem.  In  a  letter  of  Pseudo-Pius 
dealing  with  the  Quarto-decimanian  controversy  and  therefore  dating 
probably  from  early  in  the  4th  cent,  the  writer  appeals  to  a  command 
given  to  Hermas  by  the  angel  that  appeared  to  him  in  the  garb  of  a 
shepherd,  to  the  effect  that  the  Pascha  should  be  celebrated  on  the  Lord's 
day  ("eidem  Hermae  angelus  domini  in  habitu  pastoris  apparuit  et  praece- 
pit  ei  ut  pascha  die  dominica  ab  omnibus  celebaretur  ").  Zahn  thinks  this 
is  the  command  referred  to  in  the  Liberian  Cat.  in  which  case  the  notice 
there  contained  must  not  only  be  from  the  fourth  cent.,  but  also  have  no 
reference  to  our  work  for  it  contains  no  such  command.  See  also  Harnack, 
Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit.  I,  i.,  p.  56,  who  finds  Zahn's  explanation  "  very 
improbable  ". 

''*  For  the  sake  of  completeness  we  must  say  a  word  about  the  puzzling 
Pseudocyprianic  tract  known  as  de  aleatoribus.  This  work  might  be 
ignored  here  were  it  not  that  Prof.  Harnack  (Texte  und  Untersuchungen, 
Vol.  V.)  some  years  ago  endeavored  to  show  that  it  is  from  the  pen  of 
the  Bishop  Victor  of  Rome.  This  view  has  not  found  much  favor  with 
scholars  and  recently  Prof.  Harnack  himself  does  not  seem  so  desirous 
of  maintaining  it  {Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Lit.,  i.  52,  719.  Cf.  Herzog,  Real- 
encycl.  3rd  ed.  vol.  iv.,  p.  347;  xx.,  p.  602).  It  has,  however,  been  taken  up 
by  Leipoldt  in  his  Entstehung  des  neutestamentlichen  Kanons,  and  part  of 
Harnack's  argument  made  the  basis  of  much  of  this  work.  In  this  tract 
the  Shepherd  is  quoted  once  fairly  literally,  once  loosely,  and  several  pas- 
sages seem  to  reflect  the  words  and  thoughts  of  Hermas.  In  no  case  is  the 
Shepherd  or  its  author  mentioned  by  name.  In  the  case  of  the  first  quo- 
tation (cap.  2)  the  introductory  words  are  dicit  enim  scriptura  divina 
and  the  quotation  is  coupled  with  a  passage  from  Sirach  and  one  from  an 
unknown  source  ["  dicit  enim  scriptura  divina  (quotation  from  Sim.  ix. 
i3»  5),  et  alia  scriptura  dicit  (Sirach  xxxii,,  (xxxv.  i),  et  iterum  (an 
unknown  passage)"].  In  the  second  case  (cap.  4)  the  author  evidently 
thinks  he  is  quoting  St.  Paul,  ["'  apostulus  idem  Paulus  commemorat  .  .  . 
die  ens  (several  passages  from  the  Epp.  to  Timothy  being  combined), 
iterum  (i  Cor.  v.  11),  et  alio  loco  (apparently  from  Mand.  iv.  i,  9)  in 
doctrinis  apostolorum  est  (a  quotation  from  an  unknown  source,  possibly 


5i6     THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

We  may  pause  here  for  a  moment  to  review  our  examina- 
tion to  this  point.  There  is  no  evidence  that,  during  the  first 
thirty  or  forty  years  of  its  existence,  the  Shepherd  occupied 
any  preeminent  jxDsition  in  the  church.  There  are  signs  that  it 
was  known  and  used,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  for 
thinking  that  it  was  regarded  as  an  apocalypse,  as  authoritative, 
or  in  any  sense  on  a  par  with  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. On  the  contrary,  there  is  good  reason  for  the  opinion 
that  no  one,  orthodox  or  heretical,  was  concerned  to  make  or 
maintain  any  such  claims  for  it.  After  that  period  a  higher 
estimate  of  it  appears  in  some  sections."  In  Gaul  it  is  quoted  by 
one  great  teacher  as  "  Scripture  ",  but  in  such  a  way  as  to 

dependent  on  the  Didache)"].  Our  hesitancy,  in  the  face  of  this,  to  re- 
ceive this  author  as  a  first-class  witness  to  the  canonical  authority  of  the 
Shepherd  is  increased  when  we  take  into  account  his  very  loose  manner 
of  quoting,  the  fact  that  several  of  his  quotations  cannot  be  identified, 
and  also  that  all  the  Old  Testament  passages  he  cites  are  to  be  found  in 
Cyprian's  de  Lapsis  or  Testimonia. 

We  are  not  concerned  except  indirectly  with  the  general  question  of 
his  forms  of  citation  and  the  argument  that  is  built  upon  them  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  history  of  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament;  but  I  cannot 
refrain  from  remarking  that  when  Prof.  Harnack  lays  down,  as  the  basis 
of  further  argument,  the  dictum  that  the  author  (of  de  aleatoribus)  "fol- 
lows a  quite  definite  and  strongly  consistent  method  of  citation  "  ("  eine 
ganz  hestimmte  und  streng  festgehaltene  Citationsweise  befolgt"  loc.  cit., 
p.  56)  he  seriously  weakens  his  own  argument  by  assuming  that  the  author 
had  two  forms  of  citation,  dicit  scrip tura  divina  and  dicit  dominus,  that 
were  apparently  of  equal  value  (augenscheinlich  gleichwerthig) .  Nor 
should  he  say  in  another  place  {Das  neue  Testament  um  200,  p.  36)  that 
according  to  de  aleatoribus  "  the  Old  Testament  and  the  Apocalypses  of 
Hernias  and  John  belong  to  the  scrip turae  divinae  but  not  so  the  Gospels 
and  Epistles."  Nor  should  Leipoldt  follow  him  by  saying  (loc.  cit.,  p.  37) 
that  "this  writing  (de  aleatoribus)  regards  apparently  only  two  books 
outside  of  the  Old  Testament  as  Holy  Scripture  in  this  strict  sense  of  the 
term  ".  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Old  Testament  is  never  cited  as  scrip  tura 
divina  in  de  aleatoribus,  the  passage  from  Sirach  alone  excepted,  nor  is  the 
Apocalypse  of  John,  which  is  introduced  by  the  words  dominus  occurrit 
et  dicit  (cap.  8).  To  say,  ai  Leipoldt  does  (loc.  cit.)  that  this  is  apparent- 
ly accidental  is  to  confess  that  the  whole  argument  is  unfounded.  It  has 
escaped  the  notice  of  these  writers  that  another  and  simpler,  and  consist- 
ent principle  may  be  found  for  the  author's  method  of  citation,  namely,  that 
in  all  passages,  whether  from  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament,  from  the 
Gospels  or  Apocalypse,  in  which,  in  the  Scriptures,  the  Lord  is  repre- 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  517 

leave  us  in  doubt  whether  he  really  regarded  it  as  Scripture  in 
the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  In  Africa  the  common  people 
esteemed  it  highly,  but  their  scholarly  leader  Tertullian  des- 
pised it.  In  Alexandria  it  fared  better.  Both  Clement  and 
Origen  regarded  it  as  a  real  revelation,  the  former  for  reasons 
not  clear  to  us,  the  latter  ascribing  it  to  the  Apostolic  age. 
From  Rome,  where  it  was  produced  and  where  it  presumably 
was  best  known,  comes  exceedingly  little  evidence.  Not  a 
single  author  can  be  proved  to  have  regarded  it  as  divine  or 
authoritative,  but  neither  do  we  find  any  condemnation  of  it. 
This  cannot  be  the  record  of  a  work  which  was  originally  pub- 
lished as  a  divine  revelation,  accepted  as  such  by  the  leaders  of 
the  church,  and  drawn  upon  by  them  in  matters  of  faith  and 
practice.  It  is  rather  the  story  of  a  book  that  began  its  career 
in  a  humbler  fashion,  that  found  its  way  to  the  hearts  of  the 
common  people  first,  that  was  then  occasionally  dimly  reflected 
in  the  words  of  some  writer  or  other,  and  that  then  here  and 
there,  especially  far  from  its  native  place,  and  where  a  wrong 
opinion  of  its  origin  was  current,  came  to  be  regarded  as  divine. 
But  we  have  still  one  piece  of  evidence  to  consider,  perhaps 
the  most  important  of  all,  and  we  shall  turn  to  it  now. 

The  so-called  Muratori  Fragment,'^^  it  is  generally  conceded, 

sented  as  speaking  the  introductory  formula  is  dominus  dicit.  In  the  one 
occasion  where  the  words  quoted  are  not  immediately  ascribed  to  God  in 
the  Scriptures,  the  introductory  phrase  is  enlarged  by  the  addition  of  per 
prophetam  (cap.  10,  quoting  Eli's  words  in  i  Sam:,  ii,  25).  When  the 
quotation  is  from  the  Gospels  the  addition  in  evangelio  is  found  three  times 
(cap.  3,  10)  and  in  the  only  other  formal  quotation  from  them,  both  domi- 
nus and  in  evangelio  are  lacking  (cap  2).  The  subject  could  be  mentally 
supplied ;  and  in  evangelio  was  apparently  not  regarded  as  necessary.  When 
the  quotation  is  from  the  Epistles  either  the  name  of  the  apostle  (Paul, 
cap.  3,  4,  John,  cap.  10),  or  the  title  apostolus  without  name  (cap.  4,  10)  is 
found  with  dicit  (dicens).  When  the  authority  of  the  apostolic  college 
is  cited  the  formula  is  in  doctrinis  Apostolorum  (cap.  4).  In  all  other 
cases  the  general  term  Scriptura  is  used  (cap.  2).  The  author  has  given 
us  no  passage  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  or  from  narrative  portions  of 
the  Bible,  and  so  we  cannot  say  how  he  would  have  introduced  them. 

™  The  text  may  be  found  in  an  appendix  to  Westcott's  Canon  of  the  New 
Testament,  also  in  Zahn,  Grundriss  der  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  p.  75, 
Harnack,  Zeitschrift  fiir  Kirchengeschichte,  Vol.  v.,  p.  595,  and  elsewhere. 
An  English  translation  is  given  in  The  Ante-Nicene  Fathers,  Vol,  v.,  p. 


I 


5i8  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

comes  from  about  the  end  of  the  second  century  and  reflects  the 
opinion  of  the  Roman  or  Italian  church.  It  contains  an  incom- 
plete list  of  the  books  received  into  or  rejected  from  the  New 
Testament  Scriptures,  with  notes  on  the  same.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  list  is  found  the  following  paragraph :  *'  Of  ap- 
ocalypses also  we  receive  only  those  of  John  and  Peter  which 
(latter)  some  among  us  will  not  have  read  in  the  church.  But 
the  Shepherd  was  written  by  Hermas,  very  recently,  in  our  own 
times,  when  his  brother  Pius  the  bishop  was  sitting  in  the 
episcopal  chair  of  the  church  of  the  city  of  Rome,  and  therefore 
it  ought  indeed  to  be  read,  but  it  cannot  be  publicly  read  to  the 
people  in  church,  either  among  the  Prophets  whose  number  is 
complete,  or  among  the  Apostles  to  the  end  of  time."  '^^  Such 
a  statement  as  this  would  not  be  found  in  this  place  unless 
canonicity  had  been  claimed  for  the  Shepherd.  It  is  natural 
too  to  infer  that  such  claims  had  been  made  within  that  particu- 
lar church  from  which  the  Fragment  emanates.  But  this  is  not 
necessary.  The  writers  had  in  mind  not  their  own  community 
only,  but  also  the  whole  Catholic  Church,''^^  and  therefore  had 
to  take  cognizance  of  works  for  which  claims  were  made  by 
outsiders.  From  whatever  quarter  these  claims  may  have  come, 
however,  the  Fragment  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  about  certain  pre- 
tensions which  were  made  for  the  Shepherd,  and  which  were 
doubtless  urged  in  favor  of  its  canonicity.    These  were  two  in 

603.  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  date  and  source  of  this  unique 
document.  I  shall  assume  that  it  comes  from  Rome  or  at  least  represents 
the  Roman  tradition.  Also  when  the  plural  number  is  used  to  denote 
the  authors,  I  am  only  following  a  hint  contained  in  the  Fragment  itself, 
{"  recipimus"),  without  affirming  anything  of  the  authorship, 

"LI.  71-79.  "Apocalypse  etiam  iohanis  et  pe|tri  tantum  recipimus  quam 
quidam  ex  nosjtris  legi  in  eclesia  nolunt  pastorem  uero  |  nuperrim  e  tem- 
poribus  nostris  in  urbe  |  roma  herma  conscripsit  sedente  cathe|tra  urbis 
romae  aeclesiae  pio  eps  fratre  |  eius  et  ideo  legi  eum  quide  oportet  se 
pu|plicare  vero  in  eclesia  populo  neque  inter  |  prof  etas  completum  numero 
neque  inter  |  apostolos  in  fine  temporum  potest ".  In  corrected  Latin : 
"  Apocalypses  etiam  Johannis  et  Petri  tantum  recipimus,  quam  quidam  ex 
nostris  in  urbe  Roma  Hermas  conscripsit  sedente  cathedra  urbis  Romae 
ecclesiae  Pio  episcopo  fratre  ejus;  et  ideo  legi  eum  quidem  oportet,  se 
publicare  vero  in  ecclesia  populo,  neque  inter  prophetas  completo  numero, 
neque  inter  apostolos  in  finem  temporum  potest ". 

"Fragr.,  1.  66,  cf.  69. 


I 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  519 

number.  The  first  was  that  the  Shepherd  dates  from  apostolic 
times.  This  is  evident  from  the  way  the  Fragment  heaps  up 
clauses  to  disprove  such  an  early  origin,*^®  It  was  written,  it 
says,  *'  very  recently  ",  "  in  our  own  times  ",  "  when  Pius  was 
bishop  of  Rome  ",  by  the  brother  of  this  same  Pius  and  this  is 
given  as  the  ground  {et  ideo)  for  its  exclusion  from  the  Canon. 
The  second  argument  was  that  the  Shepherd  was  an  apo- 
calypse. This  is  evident  enough  from  its  being  classed  with 
the  Apocalypses  of  John  and  Peter.  What  is  the  attitude  of 
the  Fragment  toward  this?  In  the  first  place,  it  cannot  be 
urged  that  the  parallelism  "  we  receive  only  ....  but  "  shows 
the  writers'  own  view  viz.  that  the  Shepherd  too  is  in  an  apoca- 
lypse. The  only  necessary  inference  is  that  the  work  was  com- 
monly or  sometimes  ranked  as  an  apocalypse.  Again,  it  may  be 
asked,  whether  in  asserting  the  late  date  of  the  book  the  Frag- 
ment does  not  mean  to  imply  that  it  is  not  apocalyptic.  No 
definite  answer  can  be  given  to  this,  but  the  indications  are  that 
it  does.  Elsewhere'''^  the  Fragment  is  pronouncedly  anti-mon- 
tanistic,  and  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  its  authors  could  have 
thought  of  revelations  as  late  as  the  time  of  Pius.^^  But  there 
is  still  another  indication  that  this  is  really  the  view  of  the 
Fragment.  The  last  lines  of  our  paragraph  read,  "  it  cannot  be 
publicly  read  ....  either  among  the  Prophets  whose  number 
is  complete  or  among  the  Apostles  till  the  end  of  time." 
"  Prophets  "  and  ''  Apostles  "  here,  as  elsewhere  in  the  litera- 
ture of  this  period,  are  doubtless  equivalent  to  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments.  But  there  seems  to  be  an  especial  appropriateness 
in  the  use  of  the  terms  here.  Out  of  several  designations  of  the 
Scriptures  at  their  disposal,  all  current  at  the  time,  the  authors 
of  the  Fragment  have  chosen  two  which  had  reference  to  the 
two  arguments  advanced  in  favor  of  the  Shepherd  by  their 
opponents.  That  this  is  so,  that  the  use  of  these  words  is  not 
perfunctory,  is  shown  too  by  the  insertion  of  the  phrase  "whose 
number  is  complete  "  after  "  prophets  ".     This  phrase  indeed 

"  So  too  Zahn  (Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  {.,  p.  340)  who  however  does 
not  regard  the  Fragment  as  well  informed  concerning  the  date  of  the 
Shepherd,  but  thinks  its  author  was  driven  to  exaggeration  by  the  zeal  of 
the  advocates  of  an  early  date. 

"L.   84.  ""Zahn,  op.  cit.,  ii.,  p.  116. 


Sao 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


amplifies  and  completes  the  argument  against  the  reception  of 
the  Shepherd,  begun  in  the  assertion  of  its  late  date.  The 
Fragment  therefore  says  in  effect,  that  the  Shepherd  cannot  be 
classed  with  the  Apostles  for  it  is  of  later  date,  nor  with  the 
Prophets  for  their  number  is  complete,  that  is  Hermas  was  not 
a  prophet  nor  his  work  a  revelation.^^ 

Taking  this  then  as  the  view  of  the  authors,  and  remember- 
ing the  historical  situation,  this  little  section  of  the  Muratori 
Fragment,  so  puzzling  to  commentators,  becomes  a  well  con- 
ceived and  carefully  guarded  statement.  The  problem  was 
this :  Here  was  a  'work  forty  or  fifty  years  old,  which  had  been 
popular  and  useful  in  the  church.  On  account  of  its  apocalyptic 
form  and  the  apostolic  name  of  its  author  it  was  held  by  some 
to  be  divinely  inspired  and  equal  to  the  canonical  Scriptures. 
The  authors  of  the  Fragment  knew  better.  They  knew  by 
whom  it  was  written  and  when,  and  that  it  was  not  a  revelation. 
They  had  to  remove  the  misunderstanding  that  was  abroad 
concerning  the  work,  but  they  had  to  do  so  warily  or  create  an 
opinion  of  the  Shepherd  as  incorrect  as  the  one  they  would  de- 
stroy. They  dared  not  say  for  instance  "  we  do  not  receive  it", 
a  phrase  which  is  used  of  other  books.  ^^  Qf  course  in  one  sense 
the  Shepherd  is  rejected. ^^  It  is  not  recognized  as  part  of  the 
canonical  Scriptures.  But  all  the  works  of  which  "  not  re- 
ceived "  is  said  (apocryphal  letters  of  Paul  and  the  writings  of 
Arsinous  and  others),  are  not  only  rejected  from  the  Canon  but 
positively  stigmatized  as  evil ;  as  the  Fragment  says,  "  gall 
should  not  be  mixed  with  honey.  "^*  This  phrase  could  not 
therefore  be  used  of  the  Shepherd  without  giving  rise  to  the  im- 
pression that  it  was  "  gall  ",  and  so  the  authors  avoid  it. 
Again,  let  us  put  ourselves  for  a  moment  mentally  in  the  posi- 
tion of  those  who  believed  Hermas  to  be  the  friend  of  Paul  to 
whom  he  sent  greetings,  and  the  Shepherd  to  be  the  record  of 

*^  Similarly,  Leipoldt,  op.  cit.,  p.  48;  Hesse,  Das  muratorische  Fragment 
p.  270  f. ;  Credner,  Gesch.  d.  mutest.  Kanons,  p.  117,  whose  statements 
however  are  not  in  full  harmony,  cf.  p.  165;  Overbeck,  Zur  Gesch.  des 
Kanons,  pp.  100,  105,  and  others. 

^Ll.  63  ff.;  81  ff. 

^  This  is  involved  in  "  tantum    .    .    .    vero  ". 

»*   L.  67. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  521 

divine  revelations  which  had  been  vouchsafed  to  him.  What 
would  be  our  first  thought,  were  we  informed  that  the  book  was 
written  a  hundred  years  after  we  had  supposed,  and  was  not  a 
revelation?  We  would  say  at  once:  then  the  book  lies  about 
its  origin  and  its  contents,  it  is  apocryphal  and  false.  These 
are  exactly  the  words  Tertullian,  as  we  have  seen,  used  to  de- 
scribe the  declaration  of  some  councils  of  the  churches  concern- 
ing the  Shepherd,  and  it  seems  more  than  probable  that  just 
such  a  statement  as  the  one  before  us  was  in  his  mind.*^ 
Whether,  however,  Tertullian  is  guilty  of  this  or  not,  such  a 
false  inference  had  to  be  guarded  against,  and  it  is  for  this 
purpose  that  the  authors  of  the  Fragment  after  the  assertion  of 
the  Shepherd's  late  date  hasten  to  add  "  therefore  it  ought  to  be 
read.  "  Commentators  have  been  puzzled  by  the  "  therefore  " 
here.  One,  who  otherwise  has  excellently  understood  the  situa- 
tion, is  driven  to  the  extremity  of  saying  that  the  work  was 
ordered  to  be  read  because  it  was  written  by  the  brother  of  a 
bishop.  ^^  But  the  matter  is  clear  when  seen  in  its  proper  set- 
ting. The  writers  have  in  view  those  who  would  be  inclined  to 
go  from  the  extreme  of  admiration  to  that  of  denunciation. 
To  these  they  say :  "  the  Shepherd  is  not  what  you  think  it  is, 
but  you  must  not  condemn  it  because  you  have  made  a  mistake ; 
it  is  a  good  book  and  therefore  it  ought  to  be  read."  But  after 
all  the  main  thing  in  the  writers'  minds  is  to  ensure  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  Shepherd  from  the  Scriptures,  and  so,  after  having 
qualified  its  rejection  in  this  way,  they  conclude  strongly  (the 
"  therefore  "  being  still  in  force)  :  "  but  it  cannot  be  read 
publicly  in  the  church  to  the  people  either  among  the  Prophets 
whose  number  is  complete  or  among  the  Apostles  to  the  end  of 
time ;  "  that  is  to  say,  it  is  to  be  ranked  with  neither  the  Old  nor 
the  New  Testament. 

The  correctness  of  this  interpretation -will  be  more  apparent 

*^  Similarly  Credner,  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  p.  117.  An  interesting 
parallel  to  Tertullian's  statement  is  found  in  Zahn,  Gesch.  d.  neutest. 
Kanons,  ii.,  p.  113,  "  wer  das  Buch  trotz  des  Namens  Clemens  (vis.  ii.  4) 
und  vieler  anderer  Anzeichen  fiir  ein  Werk  aus  der  Zeit  urn  145  hielt, 
musste  es  fiir  eine  pseudepigraphe  Fiction  halten".  Cf.  also  p.  118  and 
vol.  i.,  p.  342. 

*'  Hesse,  op.  cit.,  pp.  268  ff. 


522 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


when  we  see  how  others  are  involved  with  difficulties.  I  will 
take  for  examples  those  of  Professors  Zahn  and  Harnack,  who 
approach  the  matter  from  different  standpoints.  Professor 
Zahn,®^  who  has  little  respect  for  the  judgment  of  the  author  of 
the  Fragment,  explains  the  injunction  to  read  the  Shepherd  as 
follows.  The  Fragmentist  believed  that  the  Shepherd  had  been 
published  as  an  apocalypse  but  was  himself  of  the  opinion  that 
it  was  not  such,  and  was  not  kindly  disposed  toward  it.  But 
because  it  could  not  be  charged  with  heresy,  or  intentional 
falsehood,  or  because  it  had  been  found  valuable  in  the  church, 
or  perhaps  by  way  of  concession  to  the  opposite  party, — we 
cannot  be  sure  of  his  motives,- — he  retained  the  work  in  a  minor 
position,  as  a  sort  of  deutero-canonical  work,  and  ordered  it  to 
be  read,  only  providing  that  it  shall  not  be  read  in  the  public 
services  of  the  church  along  with  the  Old  and  New  Testament. 
But  such  an  interpretation  is  possible  only  to  one  who  holds  as 
low  an  opinion  of  the  author  or  authors  of  the  Fragment  as 
Prof.  Zahn  does.  In  several  respects  it  is  out  of  accord  with 
the  statements  of  the  Fragment,  and  what  we  know  from  other 
sources  about  this  time.  Elsewhere  the  Fragment  is  straight- 
forward, honest,  and,  we  may  add,  definite  in  its  statements 
concerning  the  rejection  or  acceptance  of  writings.  When 
there  is  a  difference  of  opinion  in  the  church  regarding  a  work, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Apocalypse  of  Peter,  the  fact  is  recorded 
without  comment  or  attempted  compromise.  It  is  hardly  think- 
able therefore  that  the  author  or  authors  would  admit  even  to 
a  secondary  place  a  work  which  they  believed  laid  claim  to  in- 
spiration falsely.  Moreover,  there  is  no  sign  in  the  Fragment 
or  in  the  other  literature  of  this  time  of  any  deutero-canonical 
books,^*  and  later  when  there  were,  only  such  works  were  in- 
volved as  were  of  obscure  origin.  For  the  authors  of  the 
Fragment  the  origin  of  the  Shepherd  was  not  doubtful. 

Professor  Harnack^^  thinks  that  the  author  of  the  Fragment, 
in  agreement  with  the  church  generally,  regarded  the  Shepherd 
as  a  genuine  prophecy;  that  the  eloquent  silence  of  the  author 

"  Gesch.  d.  neutest.  Kanons,  vol.  i.,  pp.  342  flf.,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  111-118;  in 
Herzog,  Realencycl.  3rd  ed.  vol.  ix.,  pp.  778  f. 
"  Harnack  emphasizes  this,  Zeitschrift  fur  Kirchengeschichte,  iii.  p.  399. 
*  Ibid.,  pp.  369  ff. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  523 

concerning  Christian  prophetic  writings  in  their  relation  to  the 
authoritative  church  collection  is  very  significant ;  that  the  time 
was  past  when  prophecy  just  because  it  was  prophecy  could  be 
accounted  canonical ;  other  conditions  were  now  prerequisite  to 
reception  into  the  sacred  collection ;  that  it  was  necessary  there- 
fore for  the  Fragmentist  to  create  a  new  category  for  Christ- 
ian prophetical  books,  and  that  he  did  this  by  making  it  the 
duty  of  Christians  to  read  them  privately,  that  is,  not  in  the 
public  church  services.  But  how  inconsistent  that  is  with  itself 
and  with  what  Prof.  Harnack  says  elsewhere  in  the  same 
article !  How  can  the  Fragment  be  "  eloquently  silent  concern- 
ing the  relation  of  the  prophetical  writings  to  the  authoritative 
church  collection  "  and  at  the  same  time  "  create  for  them  a 
special  category  "  ?  And  how  does  the  creation  of  a  special 
category  differ  from  the  erection  of  a  deutero-canon,  of  which 
Prof.  Harnack  tells  us  there  is  no  sign  at  this  time  in  the  Frag- 
ment or  elsewhere?  Or,  looking  at  the  larger  question,  is  it 
possible  that  works  which  a  few  years  before  had  occupied  a 
position  second  to  none  among  the  Christian  writings,  should 
within  one  generation  be  relegated  to  at  least  comparative  ob- 
scurity?^^ But  quite  apart  from  these  considerations  Har- 
nack's  interpretation  is  wrecked  on  the  fact  that  the  Muratori 
Fragment  has  not  one  word  to  say  about  Christian  prophetical 
writings  as  a  class  being  read.  All  other  so-called  Apocalypses 
are  definitely  excluded  by  the  ''  only  "  of  line  y2 ;  the  Shepherd 
alone  is  separated  from  them  and  made  the  subject  of  special 
remark.  There  is  not  a  shadow  of  justification  for  the  state- 
ment that  the  contents  of  this  remark  were  applicable  to  any 
other  writings  or  class  of  writings. 

When,  therefore,  we  find  these  scholars,  differing  as  they 
do  in  their  attitude  toward  the  history  of  the  Canon  and  in 
their  estimate  and  interpretation  of  the  Muratori  Fragment, 
both  alike  involved  in  difficulties  and  inconsistencies  through 
the  assumption  that  the  Shepherd  was  published,  and  for  long 
regarded,  as  an  apocalypse,  we  come  back  with  the  more  con- 

^  Harnack  himself  (ibid.,  p.  405)  acknowledges  the  "ausserordentlich 
raschen  Verlauf  des  Prozesses,  Cf.  the  criticism  by  Overbeck,  op.  cit., 
p.  75  f. 


524 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


fidence  to  the  interpretation  of  this  passage  to  which  we  were 
led  by  our  investigation  of  the  historical  background.  What 
the  authors  of  Muratori  Fragment  say  here  is  in  effect :  **  We 
know  in  detail  the  history  of  the  origin  of  the  Shepherd  of 
Hermas  and  can  assure  the  church  that  it  never  was  intended 
to  be  taken  as  an  apocalypse;  those  who  have  so  regarded  it 
have  been  mistaken ;  it  is  a  good  book  and  ought  to  be  read, 
but  it  is  not  part  of  the  Scriptures."  In  other  words,  what  the 
Muratori  Fragment  does,  is  not  to  take  away  the  authority 
which  had  universally  been  conceded  to  the  Shepherd  at  one 
time,  but  to  check  a  growing  tendency  to  regard  it  as  canonical. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas  itself,  the  first 
thing  that  engages  our  attention  is  that  the  work  is  in  the 
form  of  a  revelation,  then  that  there  is  a  certain  correspon- 
dence between  it  and  the  other  apocalyptic  and  cryptic  literature 
of  the  time.  Divine  messengers  as  mediators,  visions  as  the 
mediums  of  the  revelations,  prayer  and  fasting  as  suitable 
means  of  preparation,  the  dialogue  form,  are  common  fea- 
tures. Moreover,  some  of  the  incidents  in  the  Shepherd  are 
strikingly  similar  to  those  in  the  apocalypses,  for  instance, 
the  command  to  write  down  the  revelations,  the  appearance 
of  the  saints  of  God  in  the  form  of  sheep,  the  mention  of 
angels'  names,  the  church  in  the  form  of  a  woman ;  and  finally 
as  Hermas  quotes  from  one  of  the  apocalypses — the  lost  book 
of  Eldad  and  Modat — ^there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
he  was  acquainted  with,  and  influenced  by  this  sort  of  literature 
in  the  production  of  his  own  work. 

More  recently  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  connect  the 
Shepherd  of  Hermas  with  the  Hermetic  literature  of  Egypt. 
Reitzenstein^^  would  have  us  believe  that  not  only  is  the  name 

•^  Reitzenstein,  Poimandres,  pp.  ii  ff.,  32  f.  C.  Taylor  {Jour,  of  Phil- 
ology, xxviii.,  p.  Z7)  finds  "  an  intricate  and  artificial  correspondence " 
between  the  Shepherd  and  the  Tabula  Cebetis  which  he  can  account  for 
only  "on  the  hypothesis  that  Hermas  used  the  Tabula  with  necessary 
variations  as  material  for  his  Christian  allegory."  Taylor  has  done  good 
service  in  pointing  out  the  intentional  enigmatic  character  of  the  Shepherd^ 
but  his  conclusions,  both  in  the  article  referred  to  and  in  his  Hermas  and 
the  Four  Gospels  are  too  far  fetched  always  to  command  respect.  See  the 
criticism  by  St.  John  Stock  in  Journ.  of  Phil.,  xxviii. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  525 

"  Hermas  "  connected  with  Hermes  Trismegistus  and  the  title 
"  Shepherd  "  with  Poimander,  and  the  Arcadia  in  the  Shepherd 
with  the  belief  that  this  was  the  home  of  Hermes,  but  also, 
from  a  striking  parallel  between  the  fourth  vision  of  Hermas 
and  the  introduction  to  the  Poimander,  concludes  that  the 
author  of  the  former  had  the  other  work  before  him,  though 
in  a  form  somewhat  different  from  that  which  has  come  down 
to  us. 

But  if  the  Shepherd  is  undoubtedly  similar  to  the  apocal- 
ypses in  form,  it  is  just  as  certainly  different  from  them  in 
every  other  respect.^^  The  best  proof  of  this  is  a  perusal  of 
the  works  themselves.  The  other  Jewish  and  Christian  so- 
called  apocalypses  belong  to  an  entirely  different  world  of 
ideas.  The  intellectual  background,  the  purpose  of  writing,  the 
attitude  toward  the  past,  the  present,  the  future,  the  object 
of  writing,  the  centre  of  interest' — in  all  these  matters  the 
Shepherd  goes  its  own  way.  The  eschatological  interest  which 
dominates  the  other  apocalypses  is  almost  entirely  lacking.  We 
learn  that  the  future  world  is  summer  to  the  righteous  and 
winter  to  sinners,®^  that  for  some  there  is  no  hope  but  even  a 
double  penalty,  even  eternal  death,®^  that  the  Church  at  last 
shall  be  utterly  pure  from  spot  and  blemish,^^  that  the  build- 
ing of  the  tower  has  been  stopped  for  a  little  to  allow  some  to 
repent,®^  that  the  Master  is  now  away  but  may  return  at  any 
moment,^^  but  beyond  such  general  statements  the  writer  does 
not  go.  Not  that  the  church  and  present  conditions  are  iso- 
lated from  the  past  and  present — the  Shepherd  knows  that 
God  who  made  all  things  of  nothing  has  created  the  heaven 
and  the  earth,  and  all  things  for  his  Church.^^  But  he  does 
not  pry  into  these  matters  nor  do  they  ever  occupy  the  cen- 
tral place  in  his  thought.  In  general  he  is  content  with  the 
knowledge  that  God  is  back  of  all.  Nor  of  the  secrecy  which 
is  such  a  prominent  feature  of  the  Jewish  apocalypses  is  there 

^  See  Zahn,  Der  Hirt  des  Hermas,  p.  366  ff.  where  earlier  literature  is 
noted.  Hilgenfeld,  Die  apostolischen  Vdter,  p.  158.  Hennecke,  Neutesta- 
mentliche  Apokryphen,  pp.  16,*  208.  Donaldson,  The  Apostolical  Fathers, 
p.  336  f.    Kruger,  Hist,  of  early  Christian  Literature,  Engl,  trans.,  p.  42. 

"'  Sim.  iv.  **  Sim.  ix.  18.  »=  Ibid. 

""Sim.  ix.  14.  "5im.  v.  5,  ix.  5,  7.        ^^  Vis.  i.  3. 


526  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

any  trace.  On  the  contrary  there  is  hardly  a  paragraph,  cer- 
tainly not  a  section,  which  does  not  contain  an  injunction  to 
Hernias  to  publish  what  he  has  heard  to  all  the  saints  or  a 
statement  that  the  promises  made  to  him  hold  good  for  all 
others  as  well.  The  Shepherd  is  the  only  so-called  apocalypse 
which  does  not  take  refuge  in  a  fictitious  claim  to  antiquity, 
and  put  forward  one  of  the  prophets  or  heroes  of  the  past  as 
author.  The  writer  "  comes  forward  unabashed  as  the  bearer 
of  a  presently  given  message  for  his  contemporaries  ".  Some 
writers  have  thought  the  contrary  but  their  evidence  is  not 
drawn  from  the  Work  itself.®^  As  little  is  there  any  wish  to  pry 
into  the  mysteries  of  the  other  world.  Angels  and  other  heav- 
enly beings  are  mentioned,  but  only  as  part  of  the  necessary  ma- 
chinery, ^^^  and  occupy  a  small  place.  They  are  interesting  to 
the  writer  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  subservient  to  the  build- 
ing of  the  church.  Of  heavens  piled  upon  heavens,  of  the 
entrances  and  the  exits  of  the  greater  and  lesser  luminaries, 
of  the  myriads  of  angels  and  their  glory,  of  the  mysteries  of 
the  spiritual  world,  there  is  no  word.  And  finally,  of  the 
sadness  which  beclouds  every  page  of  the  apocalyptic  liter- 
ature, the  sorrowful  review  of  the  past  and  its  many  sins, 
the  sense  of  present  tyrannical  oppression,  the  terrible  ques- 
tions concerning  sin  and  retribution,  the  old  promises  and  their 
apparent  lack  of  fulfilment — of  all  this  there  is  no  trace.  The 
Shepherd  is  as  little  concerned  with  the  past  as  with  the  future. 
The  present  is  his  sole  concern.  The  tower  of  the  church  of 
God  is  abuilding,  white  and  shapely  stones  are  needed  and 

"^  Such  an  hypothesis  was  thought  necessary  to  account  for  the  conflict- 
ing views  of  the  early  church,  viz.  that  the  Shepherd  was  written  by  a 
brother  of  Pius  (cir.  150),  that  the  author  was  a  contemporary  of  Clement, 
and  that  the  author  was  identical  with  Paul's  contemporary.  The  various 
forms  of  the  hypothesis  are  tabulated  by  Harnack  (cf.  note  5). 

***  This  is  a  noteworthy  fact.  There  is  scarcely  anything  mentioned  in 
the  Shepherd  that  has  not  an  allegorical  import  and  of  which  the  interpre- 
tation is  not  given.  So  consistent  is  the  author  in  this  respect,  that  we 
must  assume  that  those  things  which  obviously  were  intended  to  be  taken 
as  symbols  and  whose  explanation  is  obscure  to  us  (e.  g.  the  roots  of  the 
white  mountain,  Sim.  ix.  30;  the  four  legs  of  the  bench,  Vis.  iii.  13)  were 
quite  intelligible  to  the  early  readers. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  527 

it  is  his  concern  to  provide  them;  and  he  sets  himself  joy- 
fully to  this  task. 

The  Jewish  apocalypses  regarded  the  future  kingdom  of  the 
Messiah  as  a  transformed  material  world.  The  Shepherd  re- 
gards the  church  of  God  as  something  drawn  out  from  the 
world  both  now  and  hereafter.  He  can  therefore  contemplate 
with  equanimity  the  horrors  and  signs  of  evil  that  so  op- 
pressed the  Jewish  and  Judaistic  apocalypses,  and  confine  his 
view  to  the  beauty  of  the  tower  which  shall  surely  be  com- 
pleted according  to  the  plan  of  the  Master. ^^^  There  is  a 
great  calm  over  the  Shepherd.  This  is  the  more  remarkable 
as  the  work  was  produced  in  the  midst  of  persecutions,  when 
the  church  might  be  called  on  at  any  time  to  suffer  stripes, 
imprisonments,  great  tribulations,  crosses  and  wild  beasts  for 
the  Name's  sake;^^^  when  friend  might  betray  friend,  and 
even  children  their  parents. ^^^  No  one  can  read  the  vision  of 
the  beast,^^^  or  the  parable  of  the  willow  tree,^^^  or  of  the 
stones  cut  out  of  the  mountains  of  Arcadia, ^^^  without  per- 
ceiving that  the  writer  was  familiar  with  scenes  like  those 
pictured  in  the  story  of  the  martyrdom  of  Polycarp,  of  Per- 
petua  and  Felicitas,  or  of  those  of  Vienne.  The  Shepherd  of 
Hermas  too  was  written  in  the  blood  of  the  martyrs;  and  it 
would  not  have  surprised  us  if  the  author  had  been  goaded  in- 
to picturing  the  judgment  about  to  fall  on  persecutors,  or  the 
sufferings  of  the  blessed  martyrs,  or  had  caught  at  the  current 
ideas  of  the  coming  antichrist,  or  pictured  in  glowing  visions 

*"^The  keynote  of  the  Shepherd  is  struck  in  the  passage  {Vis.  i.  3)  • 
"  Behold  the  God  of  hosts,  who  by  his  invisible  and  mighty  power  and  by 
his  great  wisdom  created  the  world,  and  by  his  glorious  purpose  clothed  his 
creation  with  comeliness,  and  his  strong  word  fixed  the  heaven  and 
founded  the  earth  upon  the  waters  and  by  his  own  wisdom  and  providence 
formed  his  holy  church  which  also  he  blessed — behold,  he  removeth  the 
heavens  and  the  mountains  and  the  hills  and  the  seas,  and  all  things  are 
made  level  for  his  elect,  that  he  may  fulfil  to  them  the  promise  which  he 
promised  with  great  glory  and  rejoicing,  if  so  be  that  they  shall  keep  the 
ordinances  of  God,  which  they  received  with  great  faith."  I  have  availed 
myself  here  and  elsewhere  of  Dr.  Harmer's  excellent  translation.  Cf.  the 
description  of  the  finished  tower,  Sim.  ix.  9  f.,  ix.  18, 

*"»  Vis.  iii.  2.  ^°'  Vis.  ii.  2.  *"  Vis.  iv. 

^""Sim.  viii.  "^^  Sim.  ix.  19  f. 


528  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

the  brightness  of  the  heavenly  home.  Nor  would  it  be  strange 
under  such  oppression  and  with  the  view  of  families  divided 
against  themselves — of  many  being  eaten  up  with  the  cares  of 
riches^*^^  or  preferring  the  life  of  the  Gentiles,^^*  if  he  had 
allowed  doubts  to  arise  and  pessimism  to  dominate.  Com- 
pared with  the  over-wrought  dreams  of  the  apocalypses  the 
Shepherd  of  Hermas  is  a  sane  and  wholesome  work.  Instead 
of  their  fatalistic  lamentation  it  is  a  song  of  hope;  instead  of 
the  swan-song  of  a  despairing  nation,  the  battle-cry  of  a 
vigorous  community, — a  community  so^  young  that  it  is  not 
yet  clear  as  to  its  beliefs  or  its  rules  of  conduct,^^^  but  old 
enough  to  have  pride  in  its  witnesses,  confidence  in  its  divine 
Lord,  assurance  of  ultimate  victory  and  peace  amid  turmoil. 

All  this  is  not  without  bearing  on  the  meaning  and  purpose 
of  the  author.  For  knowing  as  he  did  these  other  movements 
in  the  church,  feeling  as  he  must  have  the  perils  that  threat- 
ened, and  having  in  mind,  as  we  know,  the  other  apocalypses, 
he  has  deliberately  turned  his  back  upon  them,  and  sharply 
condemned  the  prevalent  desire  to  penetrate  the  mysteries  of 
the  unseen  future.  For  when  Hermas  after  watching  the 
building  of  the  tower  of  the  church  ventured  to  ask  his 
heavenly  guide  whether  the  consummation  should  be  even 
now,  "  She  cried  out  with  a  great  voice  saying,  '  Senseless  man, 
dost  thou  not  see  that  the  tower  is  still  building?  Whenso- 
ever therefore  the  tower  shall  be  finished  building  the  end 
cometh;  but  it  shall  be  built  up  quickly.  Ask  me  no  more 
questions:  this  reminder  is  sufficient  for  you  and  for  the 
saints  and  to  the  renewal  of  your  spirits.'  "  ^^^  On  only  one 
other  occasion  was  Hermas  so  sharply  reproved  by  his  guide. 
It  is  not  without  meaning  that  the  terrible  words  which  were 
for  the  heathen  and  apostates  are  omitted,  and  only  those 
recorded  which  were  "  suitable  for  us  and  gentle  ".^^^ 

Of  the  relation  of  the  Shepherd  to  the  Hermetic  literature 
it  is  more  difficult  to  speak.  Reitzenstein's  recent  critics  have 
shown  that  its  dependence  upon  the  Poimander  is  at  least  not 

"^'Sim.  i.,  ii.  ""'Mand.  x.  i. 

***  This  is  fundamental  and  cannot  be  harmonized  with  a  theory  of  Jewish 
origin  of  the  Shepherd. 
""  Vis.  iii.  8.  "'  Vis.  i.  3. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  529 

yet  proven,  but  there  is  a  general  agreement  that  both  works, 
in  form  at  least,  have  much  in  common. ^^^  And  indeed, 
Reitzenstein  claims  little  more.  For  although  he  points 
out  resemblances  between  Hermas'  conception  of  prophecy 
and  that  of  the  Hermetic  literature, ^^^  between  the  lists 
of  good  and  evil  powers, ^^*  these  are  things  common  to  a 
larger  literature,  and  he  is  too  well  acquainted  with  both  the 
Shepherd  and  the  Hermetic  literature  to  affirm  more  than  a 
literary  relationship.  In  discussing  what  he  considers  the 
clearest  case  of  borrowing  he  says  that  the  appearance  of  the 
divine  messenger  in  the  form  of  a  shepherd  is  a  "  perfectly 
meaningless  mask "  in  the  Christian  work  and  that  "  his 
(Hermas')  conception  of  the  shepherd  is  blurred  and  con- 
fused, so  that  everything  indicates  that  here  we  have  to  do 
with  a  foreign  type  which  has  been  clumsily  introduced  into  the 
Christian  apocalyptic  literature  ".^^^  And  again,  ''  I  do  not 
venture  just  now  to  say  how  far  these  heathen  ideas  have  in- 
fluenced the  theology  of  the  Christian  author,  that  is  to  so  say, 
how  far  the  phenomenon  of  the  shepherd  was  a  matter  of  belief 
or  only  literary  fiction;  the  writing  (the  Shepherd)  is  too 
unique  for  us  to  determine  whether  the  lack  of  prominence 
given  to  Christ  and  of  clearness  in  picturing  him  is  to  be  ex- 
plained by  the  assumption  that  his  heathen  counterpart  has 
been  taken  over  along  with  the  literary  form."  After  saying 
that  "  the  whole  fiction  of  these  progressive  revelations  and 
visions  is  quite  consonant  with  such  an  assumption  ",  he  con- 
tinues, "  But  even  if  we  admit  only  a  purely  literary  influence 
we  have  a  result  both  peculiar  and  well  worthy  of  notice. 
The  Christian  author  uses  heathen  models  quite  as  unconcern- 
edly as  did  the  author  of  the  Christian  Clementine  romance 
or  the  inventor  of  the  apocryphal  Acts  of  an  Apostle  at  a 

^"Krebs,  Der  Logos  als  Heiland  im  ersten  Jahrhundert,  pp.  136  ff. 
Bardy,  Le  Pasteur  d' Hennas  et  les  livres  hermetiques,  Rev.  Biblique,  191 1, 
pp.  391  ff.  Lietzmann,  Theol.  Literaturs.,  1905,  sp.  202.  Cf.  Cumont,  Les 
religions  orientales  dans  le  paganisme  romain,  p.  340,  n.  41 ;  Dibellius 
Zeit.  f.  Kirchengesch.,  1905,  pp.  169  ff.  who  will  not  go  so  far. 

"'0/>.  cit.,  p.  203  f.  ^^*Ihid.,  p.  231  f. 

^^ Ibid.,  p.  13.  But  see  the  severe  criticism  by  Krebs  (op.  cit.,  p.  138  f.), 
who  however  has  to  assume  that  the  Angel  of  Repentance  in  the  Shep- 
herd is  identical  with  the  youth  in  the  previous  visions. 


530    THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

later  time.  This  indeed  contradicts  such  conceptions  (of 
Hernias)  as  for  instance  that  of  Zahn,  who  makes  of  him  a 
*  man  of  the  people  '  to  whom  literary  influences  could  not 
come,  and  who  on  account  of  his  lack  of  culture  must  have 
really  seen  his  visions  as  he  reported.  I  will  not  speak  of  the 
biased  exaggeration  that  underlies  the  expression  *  man  of  the 
people '.  .  .  .  It  does  not  follow  from  the  author's  lack 
of  culture  that  he  was  fully  independent  of  literary  models; 
the  only  immediate  inference  is  that  we  have  to  seek  these 
models  among  the  lower  strata  of  literature  and  as  a  rule  must 
assume  a  more  independent  attitude  toward  them  on  the  part 
of  the  author."  ^^^  In  these  sentences  Reitzenstein  shows  that 
he  has  a  keener  appreciation  of  the  problem  of  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Shepherd  than  some  theological  writers.  For  if  the 
Shepherd  of  Hermas  is  "  quite  unique  ",  if  only  a  formal  re- 
lation to  the  apocalyptic  and  Hermetic  literature  can  be  asserted 
and  the  whole  intellectual  and  religious  background  is  different, 
and  this  in  spite  of  the  presence  of  some  heathen  and  perhaps 
Hermetic  ideas,  is  it  not  difficult  to  conceive  of  it  as  the  naive 
record  of  the  real  or  fancied  experiences  of  a  Christian  pro- 
phet? Much  more  likely  is  it  the  conscious,  and  in  some  re- 
spects clumsy  imitation  that  Reitzenstein  supposes  it  to  be. 

That  Hermas  was  one  of  the  "  prophets  "  occasionally  men- 
tioned in  early  Christian  literature  has  now  become  so  firmly 
fixed  an  opinion  that  it  is  more  often  asserted  than  examined. 
And  yet  both  the  "  prophets  "  and  Hermas  are  sufficiently 
described  in  the  Shepherd,  for  us  to  institute  a  comparison, 
which  will  show  that  Hermas  could  not  have  regarded  himself 
as  one  of  this  order,  in  spite  of  Harnack's  contention  that 
the  appearance  of  "  apostles  and  teachers  "  in  the  Shepherd 
instead  of  the  usual  "  apostles,  prophets  and  teachers  "  indi- 
cates the  contrary. ^^''^  In  the  eleventh  mandate  after  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  false  prophet,  who  with  other  criticisms  is  de- 
scribed as  "  not  having  the  power  of  a  divine  Spirit  in  him  ", 
as  being  "  empty  ",  or,  because  he  sometimes  speaks  truth,  as 
one  whom  "  the  devil  fills  with  his  own  spirit  ",  Hermas  de- 
scribes true  prophecy.     "  No  Spirit  given  by  God  needeth  to 

*"  op.  cit.,  p.  33. 

"'  Mission  and  Expansion  of  Christianity,  2nd  ed.  Engl,  trans.,  I,  p.  339f. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  531 

be  asked:  but  such  a  Spirit  having  the  power  of  divinity 
speaketh  all  things  of  itself  for  it  proceedeth  from  above, 
from  the  power  of  the  divine  Spirit."  The  true  prophet  may 
be  recognized  by  the  following  signs :  "By  his  life  test  the 
man  that  hath  the  divine  Spirit.  In  the  first  place  he  that 
hath  the  divine  Spirit  which  is  from  above,  is  gentle  and 
tranquil  and  humble  minded,  and  abstaineth  from  all  wicked- 
ness and  vain  desire  of  this  present  world,  and  holdeth  him- 
self inferior  to  all  men,  and  giveth  no  answer  to  any  man 
when  inquired  of,  nor  speaketh  in  solitude,  for  neither  doth 
the  Holy  Spirit  speak  when  a  man  wisheth  him  to  speak;  but 
then  he  speaketh  when  God  wisheth  him  to  speak.  When 
therefore  a  man  having  the  divine  Spirit  comes  into  an  as- 
sembly of  righteous  men  who  have  faith  in  a  divine  Spirit 
and  this  assembly  of  men  offers  up  prayer  to  God,  then  the 
angel  of  the  prophetic  Spirit  who  is  attached  to  him  filleth  the 
man,  and  the  man,  being  filled  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  speaketh 
to  the  multitude  as  the  Lord  willeth.^^^  In  this  way  therefore 
the  divine  Spirit  shall  be  evident.  As  touching  the  divine 
Spirit  therefore  whatever  power  there  is,  is  of  the  Lord."  If 
the  test  of  the  true  prophet  is  his  life,  Hermas,  according  to 
his  own  statements,  could  not  have  passed  examination.  There 
are  indeed  good  things  said  of  him.  He  is  temperate,  he 
abstains  from  every  evil  desire  and  is  full  of  all  simplicity  and 
guilelessness,^^^  but  he  also  is  over  indulgent  toward  his 
family,  corrupted  by  the  sins  of  the  world,^^^  covets  a  place  of 
honor  higher  than  he  is  entitled  to,^^^  is  doubtful  minded  in 
religious  matters,^-^  and  even  says  weeping  of  himself  and 
without  contradiction  "  Never  in  my  life  spake  I  a  true  word 
but  I  always  lived  deceitfully  with  all  men  and  dressed  up  my 
falsehood  as  truth  before  all  men,"  ^^^  and  in  another  place, 
"  I  know  not  what  deeds  I  must  do  that  I  may  live,  for  my 
sins  are  many  and  various."  ^^*  Examples  might  be  multiplied 
but  it  is  not  necessary  for  the  Angel  of  Repentance  himself  in 

^^^t6t€  6  ^77eXos  tov  irpo(f>r}TiKov  irveifiaTOS  6  Kcl/xevos  rrpbs  airrov  irXrfpoi  rbv  AvOpuirov, 
Kal  irXTfpuOeis  6  &v6p(airos  t<^  irveijfmTi  Tip  ayi(p  XoXe?  els  rb  irXijOos    /co^tis  6  icjptot 


fioiL^Xerai. 

"'  Vis.  i.  2. 

'^  Vis.  I  3. 

^^  Vis.  iii.  I. 

'^Fu.  iv.  I. 

'""Mand.  iii. 

^^  Maud.  iv.  2. 

I 


532 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


reminding  him  that  "  there  are  others  before  thee  and  better 
than  thou  art  unto  whom  these  visions  ought  to  have  been 
revealed  "  ^-*  informs  us  that  Hermas  did  not  measure  up  to 
the  standard  required  of  a  *'  prophet  ". 

But  even  though  Hermas  were  able  to  stand  the  moral  test, 
or  be  regarded  as  an  exception,  as  the  words  of  the  Angel  of 
Repentance  might  imply,  the  manner  in  which  he  received  the 
revelations  does  not  accord  with  his  description  of  prophecy. 
According  to  the  passages  we  have  quoted  the  prophet  is 
filled  with  the  prophetic  spirit,  he  does  hot  speak  when  he 
will  or  where  he  will  but  only  at  the  instance  of  the  divine 
spirit  that  descends  upon  him  ab  extra,  and  the  words  that  he 
speaks  are  wholly  divine.  That  is  to  say  Hermas  conceives  of 
a  prophet  as  a  mere  tool  in  the  hands  of  the  prophetic  spirit 
and  as  contributing  nothing  of  his  own  but  the  voice.  Such 
is  not  the  case  with  Hermas.  The  "  prophetic  spirit  "  is  never 
mentioned  as  the  source  of  his  revelations.  The  divine  mes- 
sengers do  not  speak  through  him  but  to  him.  He  fails  to 
comprehend,  is  reproved  for  his  curiosity,  argues  with  his 
guide,  and  always  maintains  his  own  personality  and  the 
human  point  of  view.  He  is  throughout  not  a  passive  instru- 
ment but  an  active  and  fallible  reporter.  "  Canst  thou  carry  a 
report  of  these  things  to  the  elect  of  God  ?  "  asks  the  Church 
appearing  as  an  old  woman.  "  Lady,  I  say  to  her,  I  cannot 
retain  as  much  in  my  memory  but  give  me  the  book  and  I  shall 
transcribe  it."  ^^^  The  angel  of  Repentence  commands  him 
"  to  write  down  the  commandments  and  parables  .  .  .  . 
that  thou  mayest  read  them  off-hand,  and  mayest  be  able  to 
keep  them  ".^^"^  And  the  possibility  of  neglect  of  duty  is  im- 
plied in  the  repeated  injunction  "  Continue  in  this  ministry 
and  complete  it  unto  the  end  ".^^^  "  Quit  you  like  a  man  in 
this  ministry,  declare  to  every  man  the  mighty  works  of  the 
Lord  and  thou  shalt  have  favor  in  this  ministry."  ^^9  Such 
words  would  be  inappropriate  to  the  prophets  the  Angel  de- 
scribes.^^^    We  are  not  surprised  therefore  that  Hermas  never 

"•Fw.  Hi.  4.  """Vis.  ii.  I.  '"-'Vis.  V. 

^  Sim.  X.  2.  ^^  Sim.  x.  4. 

"•The  Shepherd's  conception  of  a  prophet  as  one  completely  dominated 
by  the  divine  Spirit,  suggests  a  simpler  reason  for  the  omission  of  the 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  533 

calls  himself,  nor  does  any  other  early  writer  give  him  the 
title  of  prophet.  Neither  is  his  work  called  a  prophecy,  nor 
after  the  name  of  the  reputed  author  as  was  customary  with 
prophecies  and  apocalypses  but  after  the  chief  mediator  of 
the  revelations,  the  Shepherd.  Clement  of  Alexandria,  though 
he  occasionally  when  quoting  loosely,  uses  Shepherd  as  the 
title  of  the  book,^^^  generally  nicely  distinguishes  by  his 
method  of  citation  those  parts  which  were  revealed  by  the 
Shepherd,  the  Angel  of  Repentance^  ^^  from  the  revelations 
given  by  others  whom  he  calls  *'  the  power  that  spoke  to 
Hermas  ",^^^  or  "  the  power  that  appeared  to  Hermas  in  the 
vision  ",^^*  or  "  the  power  that  appeared  to  Hermas  in  the 
form  of  the  Church  ".^^^  We  must  conclude  that  Hermas  was 
not  the  spirit-filled  passive  being  such  as  is  meant  by  "  pro- 
phet ",  and,  if  the  Shepherd's  statements  are  to  be  taken  liter- 
ally, had  the  gift  of  seeing  visions,  which  Irenaeus  also  dis- 
tinguishes from  that  of  prophecy. ^^^ 

This  latter  hypothesis  necessitates  that  the  statements  of  the 
Shepherd  concerning  Hermas'  life  and  character  be  true,  and 
to  test  it  we  must  examine  them  with  a  view  to  determining 
their  consistency  and  probability.  Of  the  outward  circum- 
stances of  his  life  we  learn  very  little.     The  first  Vision  be- 

"  prophets  "  from  their  usual  place  between  "  apostles  "  and  "  teachers  " 
than  that  proposed  by  Prof.  Harnack.  The  apostles  and  teachers,  as  well 
as  others,  are  introduced  by  the  Shepherd  only  for  commendation  or  blame, 
— in  order  to  relate  their  rewards  or  punishments  {Vis.  iii.  5;  Sim.  ix.  15, 
16,  25),  But  the  prophet  qua  prophet  was  irresponsible  and  consequently 
above  praise  or  blame.  In  omitting  them  the  author  is  simply  obeying  the 
injunction  of  the  Didache  (chap.  x.  f.)  "the  prophet  that  speaketh  in  the 
Spirit  is  not  to  be  tried  or  judged." 

^^  Strom,  ii,  12,  55  (13,  56)  ;  iv,  9,  74. 

''^  Strom,  i,  17,  85;  cf.  vi.  6,  46;  ii,  9,  43. 

^^  Strom,  i,  29,  181.  "^  Strom,  ii,  i,  3. 

^  Strom,  vi,  15,  131.  With  Origen  this  is  reversed.  He  generally  cites 
the  book  by  its  title  (  irot/iiji' ) ,  only  rarely  speaking  of  the  Angel  of  Re- 
pentance as  the  source  of  the  revelation,  e.  g.  De  princip.  i,  3,  3 ;  In  Joann, 
i,  I  comm.  t.  I,  18.  The  references  are  from  Harnack,  Gesch.  d.  altchr. 
Lit.  I,  i,  pp.  53  f. 

^Haer,  ii.  32,  4;  v,  6,  i.  Cf.  Euseb.  Hist.  Eccl.  v,  7.  Hermas  uses  the 
terms  vision  {6pa<n%)  and  revelation  (  dTro/cdXui/'is)  of  his  experiences,  e.  g. 
Vis.  iii,  10. 


534 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


gins :  "He  who  reared  me  sold  me  to  a  certain  Rhoda  in 
Rome.  After  many  years  I  met  her  again  and  began  to  love 
her  as  a  sister.  After  a  certain  time  I  saw  her  bathing  in  the 
river  Tiber  and  I  gave  her  my  hand  and  led  her  out  of  the 
river.  So,  seeing  her  beauty,  I  reasoned  in  my  heart,  saying, 
*  Happy  were  I  if  I  had  such  an  one  to  wife,  both  in  beauty 
and  in  character '  ".  Later  in  the  same  vision  we  gather  that 
he  already  has  a  wife  and  grown  children,  who  are  fearfully 
corrupt  and  through  whose  sins  Hermas  has  lost  his  posses- 
sions. The  second  Vision,  which  is  said  to  have  occurred  a 
year  after  the  fir^t,  mentions  the  children  as  being  still  evil, 
this  time  as  having  betrayed  their  parents,  and  still  further  ad- 
ded to  their  sins  wanton  deeds  and  reckless  wickedness.  Of 
his  wife  too  it  is  added  that  she  does  **  not  refrain  from  using 
her  tongue,  wherewith  she  doeth  evil  ".  From  the  third  Vision 
we  learn  that  a  little  distance  from  the  city  he  had  a  field  in 
which  he  cultivated  grain,^^^  and  also  that  "  when  thou  (Her- 
mas) hadst  riches  thou  wast  useless  but  now  thou  art  useful 
and  profitable  unto  life  ".^^^  Several  later  passages  imply  that 
he  was  engaged  in  business,^^^  and  on  one  occasion  he  is  ad- 
dressed as  "  thou  who  hast  fields  and  dwellings  and  many  other 
possessions  ".^^^  Toward  the  end  we  are  informed  that  his 
family  repented  and  was  reunited. ^*^  There  is  nothing  neces- 
sarily inconsistent  about  these  statements.  Harnack  indeed 
doubts  the  historicity  of  the  first  Vision  on  chronological 
grounds, ^^^  Donaldson  points  out  the  improbability  of  anyone, 
however  naive,  speaking  of  his  wife  and  children  as  Hermas 
does,^^^  and  the  statement  that  Hermas  had  fields,  dwellings 
and  other  possessions  is  certainly  surprising,  coming  where  it 
does,  and  especially  as  it  is  coupled  with  a  warning  against 
seeking  wealth.  Still  it  is  quite  possible  to  weave  the  inci- 
dents, as  Zahn  has  done,^^*  into  a  self-consistent  and  touching 

^"xo»'5/>^f"5-       C^-  Zahn,  Der  Hirt.  des  Hermas,  p.  83  f. 
^**The  loss  of  wealth  is  mentioned  also  in  Vis.  i,  3,  if  we  accept  Zahn's 
interpretation  of  6.-irb  as  a  privative,  op.  cit.,  p.  490  f. 
"•  Vis.  ii,  3 ;  Mand.  iii ;  x ;  Sim.  iv. 
^**  Sim.  i.  *"  Sim.  vii. 

^*' Pair.  Apost.  Op.,  not.  ad  loc.  ^^Apostolical  Fathers,  p.  327. 

***  Op.  cit.,  pp.  70  flf.    But  he  omits  the  reference  to  wealth  in  Sim.  i. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  535 

picture  of  wealth,  early  sins,  persecution,  loss  of  possessions, 
repentance  and  restoration. 

We  turn  to  Hernias'  intellectual  and  moral  qualities.  We 
learn  that  he  was  habitually  patient,  good-tempered  and  al- 
ways smiling,^^^  that  he  abstained  from  every  evil  desire  and 
was  full  of  all  simplicity  and  great  guilelessness,^*^  that  he 
is  saved  by  his  simplicity,  great  continence  and  guilelessness,^*'^ 
that  he  is  useful  and  profitable  unto  life  since  he  has  lost  his 
wealth,^^^  and  has  great  zeal  for  doing  good.-^^^  That  is  one 
side.  On  the  other,  we  have  the  statement  that  he  was  an 
over-indulgent  and  careless  husband  and  father,  ^^^  that  his 
double-mindedness  made  him  of  no  understanding,  and  his 
heart  was  not  set  on  the  Lord,^^^  that  his  spirit  was  aged  and 
already  decayed  and  had  no  power  by  reason  of  his  infirmities 
and  acts  of  double-mindedness. ^^^  Indeed,  double-mindedness, 
one  of  the  worst  of  faults,  is  frequently  ascribed  to  him.^^^ 
He  says  of  himself  with  tears,  "  Never  in  my  life  spake  I  a 
true  word,  but  I  always  lived  deceitfully  with  all  men  and 
dressed  up  my  falsehood  as  truth  before  all  men."  ^^*  He  is 
ignorant  concerning  repentance  because  his  heart  was  made 
dense  by  his  former  deeds.  ^^^  He  is  included  among  those 
who  "  have  never  investigated  concerning  the  truth,  nor  in- 
quired concerning  the  Deity,  but  have  merely  believed  and 
have  been  mixed  up  in  business  affairs,  and  riches  and  heathen 
friendships,  and  many  other  affairs  of  this  world  ".^^^  He 
will  not  cleanse  his  heart  and  serve  God,  and  has  to  be 
warned  lest  haply  the  time  be  fulfilled  and  he  be  found  in  his 
foolishness. ^^'^  And  yet  in  spite  of  all  this  he  is  commended 
for  having  done  nothing  out  of  order  since  the  Angel  of 
Repentance  came  to  him.^^^ 

All  attempts  to  refer  Hermas'  sins  to  an  earlier  period^^^  in 
his  life  must  fail.  In  most  cases  at  least  the  sins  referred  to 
are  stated  to  be  present  ones,  as  is  shown  by  his  tears,  his 

^«  Vis.  i,  2.  "«/6ic/.  '"  Vis.  ii,  2;  iii.  I. 

"*  Vis.  iii,  6.  "»5em.  v,  3.  "^  Vis.  i,  3;  ii.  2. 

"^^Vis.  iii,  10.  "^Vis.  iii,  11. 

^^  Vis,  iv,  I ;  vi,  I ;  Mand.  ix ;  xii,  3  f . 

"^Mand.  iii.  ^^  Mand.  iv,  2.  "^  Mand.  x,  i. 

"»'  Sim.  vi,  5.  "'  Sim.   x,   2.  "» As  Zahn  does. 


536  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

ignorance  of  the  sinfulness  of  certain  actions,  his  prayers  for 
forgiveness,  and  his  joy  at  the  possibiHty  of  repentance. ^^^ 
The  simple  fact  is  that  the  statements  regarding  Hermas' 
moral  character  are  difficult  if  not  impossible  of  union  in  a 
self -consistent  picture.  Moreover,  what  are  we  to  think  of  a 
Christian  who  has  penetrated  so  far  into  the  principles  of 
Christian  morality  that  he  can  put  nice  questions  concerning 
the  treatment  of  an  adulterous  wife,  or  the  rightfulness  of 
second  marriage,^®^  or  the  possibility  of  repentance  after  bap- 
tism, ^^^  and  yet  is  not  aware  that  evil  thoughts  are  sinful,^®* 
thinks  the  Church Appearing  in  the  form"  of  a  woman  is  the 
Sybil,^^*  is  unaware  that  business  lies  are  wrong  ;^^^  and  can 
we  conceive  of  a  Christian,  however  low  his  station,  who  did 
not  know  that  the  Church  was  built  upon  the  Son  of  God,^^^  or 
was  ignorant  of  what  the  martyrs  had  suffered  ?^^^  In  the 
light  of  such  inconsistencies  it  is  easier  to  regard  Hermas  as 
a  composite  and  fictitious  figure,  which  could  and  did  vary  to 
suit  the  requirements  of  the  author,  who  at  times  must  address 
even  the  very  ignorant.  Only  such  an  assumption  will  ex- 
plain Hermas'  repeated  estimate  of  himself :  "  I  am  absolutely 
unable  to  comprehend  anything  at  all."  ^^^ 

But  even  though  we  were  to  admit  the  possibility  of  these 
mutually  exclusive  elements  existing  in  one  person,  and  should 
accept  the  resultant  picture  of  a  "  man  of  the  people  "  some- 
what as  Zahn  has  so  sympathetically  drawn  it,  we  should  only 
involve  ourselves  in  a  greater  difficulty.  For  whether  we 
agree  with  this  same  writer  in  saying  that  one  of  such  little 
culture  was  incapable  of  producing  a  romance,  we  can  most 
decidedly  affirm  that  such  a  Hermas  as  is  pictured  in  the 
Shepherd  was  not  the  author  of  the  work  that  bears  his  name. 
This  is  a  matter  so  obvious  that  it  is  surprising  it  has  not 
been  more  clearly  perceived.  For,  if  Hermas  be  ignorant  it  is 
another  than  he  that  informs  his  ignorance,  that  is  to  say 
that  provides  the  major  portion  of  the  Shepherd.  In  other 
words,  either  Hermas  as  author  gives  answers  to  his  own 

'"•E.  g.  Vis.  i,  I  f. ;  Mand.  iii;  iv,  2  f. 

^''Mand.  iv,  i.                   "^  Mand.  iv,  3.  "^  Vis.  i,  i  f. 

"^Vis.  ii,  4.                      ""Mand.  iii.  '"Sim.  ix,  4. 

*"  Vis.  iii,  2.                      ^Mand.  iv,  2;  Sim.  ix,  14. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  537 

questions,  and  corrects  his  own  faults,  or  else  he  was  the 
recipient  of  real  external  revelations.  Wake,  Thiersch,  and 
others  who  hold  to  the  reality  of  these  revelations,  were  con- 
sistent. Prof.  Zahn  too  feels  the  logical  necessity  of  making 
Hernias  a  man  of  the  people,  and  regards  them  as  real,  though 
refusing  to  estimate  their  present  value.  But  there  is  no 
excuse  for  those  who  describe  Hennas  as  he  describes  himself 
and  still  make  him  the  author  of  the  Shepherd.  The  author 
of  the  Shepherd^  whether  he  wrote  in  ecstasy  or  with  deliber- 
ation, was  somehow  or  other  competent  both  to  picture  his 
shortcomings  and  correct  them.  Von  Dobschiitz,  although 
dominated  by  the  current  theory  of  Hermas'  prophecy,  feels 
the  necessity  of  accounting  for  the  didactic  portion  of  the 
work  in  some  tangible  way  when  he  says :  '*  All  this  is  said 
to  Hermas  by  the  Church.  To  be  sure  she  appears  to  the 
prophet  as  a  heavenly  figure.  But  we  do  not  err  when  we 
transfer  the  vision  to  earth."  ^^^  Why  not  then  boldly  trans- 
fer it,  as  our  evidence  requires,  and  recognize  in  Hermas  not 
the  naive  prophet,  not  the  unconscious  type  of  the  Roman 
Christian  of  his  day,  not  the  "  strange,  solitary,  weak,  ignorant, 
ecstatic,  inspired  perhaps  but  hot  inspiring  "  teacher,  who  **  if 
he  was  really  brother  to  a  bishop  must  have  been  a  trial  to  his 
relative  '\,^'^^  but  the  intentional,  variable  type,  drawn  indeed 
from  life,  but  from  more  lives  than  one,  the  result  of  the  ex- 
perience of  the  author,  who,  as  the  apparently  reliable  Mura- 
tori  Fragment  reports,  was  brother  to  Bishop  Pius.  A  book 
that  imposed  upon  Clement  and  Origen  and  was  regarded  as 
most  useful  by  Athanasius,^*^^  was  not  written  by  a  fool, 
however  ecstatic. 

The  silly,  well-meaning  Hermas  in  the  Shepherd,  with  his 
hopes  and  fears,  his  delight  in  all  he  sees  and  hears,  his  chang- 
ing moods  of  doubt  and  confidence,  and  especially  his  ques- 

^'^  Christian  Life  in  the  Primitive  Church,  Engl,  trans,  p.  315.  Leipoldt, 
(op.  cit.,  p.  ZZ  n-  2)  says:  "Die  Apokalyptik  als  literarische  Form  zu 
benutzen,  dazu  was  Hermas  zu  ungeschickt."  Of  course  he  was — and  too 
ignorant  to  instruct  himself  or  others.  He  says  so  himself.  Then  who 
did  it? 

""  Bigg,  Origins  of  Christianity,  p.  7Z. 

'^''^De  incarn.  verb.  Dei,  iii,  i. 


I 


538    THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

tions,  frequently  stupid,  as  the  Angel  tells  him,  very  often 
quite  unnecessary  and  sometimes  to  our  mind  (and  we  doubt 
not  to  the  minds  of  the  early  Christians)  amusing  in  their 
naivete,  is  merely  a  foil  for  the  writer.  Through  him  he 
addresses  directly  any  and  every  member  of  the  community. 
For  the  Hermas  so  pictured  is  guilty,  or  in  danger  of  falling 
into  practically  every  venial  sin  mentioned  in  the  book,  evil 
thoughts,  morbid  introspection,  a  wrong  estimate  of  fasting, 
curiosity,  doubt,  business  lies,  heathen  friendships,  pride,  sad- 
ness, anger,  the  love  of  wealth,  lack  of^faith,  seeking  revela- 
tions, double-mindedness,  unchastity,  indulging  his  wife  and 
children.  This  is  the  reason  that  he  appears  suddenly  in  the 
middle  of  the  work  as  possessed  of  lands,  dwellings  and  other 
possessions,  and  it  is  probably  because  he  is  here  so  plainly  a 
type  that  Zahn  has  passed  over  this  passage  in  picturing  his 
life  and  character.  By  this  device,  too,  the  author  has  a  simple 
means  of  breaking  up  the  otherwise  wearisome  (or  more 
wearisome)  mandates  and  similitudes,  and  of  introducing  ex- 
positions of  his  visions.  In  his  Pilgrim's  Progress,  John  Bun- 
yan  on  only  one  occasion  steps  over  the  frame  of  the  picture, 
namely  when  he  asks  Hope  concerning  the  Slough  of  Despond. 
The  incident  undoubtedly  mars  the  picture,  and  we  feel  that  he 
would  have  done  better  to  allow  the  explanation  to  be  given 
to  someone  within  the  picture  as  he  invariably  does  elsewhere. 
The  author  of  the  Shepherd  has  adopted  as  his  usual  method 
that  which  was  exceptional  with  Bunyan,  but  with  the  same 
results,  save  that  he  partly  defeated  his  own  purpose,  for  his 
fiction,  like  so  many  others,  was  mistaken  by  some  for  literal 
truth.  Such  is  the  most  natural  conclusion  to  draw  from  what 
we  have  seen  of  the  history  and  contents  of  the  Shepherd  and 
there  are  still  other  indications  that  it  is  the  right  one. 

Contrary  to  the  manner  of  Apocalyptic  books,  the  Shepherd 
despises  secrecy.  Its  teachings  are  to  be  flung  broadcast  over 
the  earth.  What  is  said  to  Hermas  is  intended  for  all,  and 
there  is  scarcely  a  paragraph  in  which  he  is  not  charged  with 
the  duty  of  publishing  it  to  his  fellow-Christians  either  orally 
or  by  writing.  But  this  is  hot  all.  Not  infrequently  the 
writer  (through  the  Angel)  addresses  the  many  directly.    The 


I 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  539 

first  instance  of  this^'''^  is  introduced  by  a  command  to  Her- 
mas  to  bear  the  message  to  the  leaders  and  others,  but  such 
direction  is  so  frequently  omitted  and  the  singular  and  plural 
alternate  without  reason  or  excuse,  that  the  most  natural  ex- 
planation is  that  the  writer  was  not  always  true  to  his  fiction 
of  one  interlocutor  but  unconsciously  addressed  the  many 
whom  he  really  had  in  mind.^"^^  One  who  reads  these  passages 
with  attention  to  the  alternation  of  the  singular  and  plural 
cannot  but  mark  how  the  person  of  Hermas  is  dimmed  and 
merged  in  the  crowd  back  of  him.  One  example  must  suffice 
here.  "  '  Sir,  this  one  thing  alone  /  ask  concerning  the  three 
forms  of  the  aged  woman,  that  a  complete  revelation  may  be 
vouchsafed  to  me  ^  He  saith  to  me  in  answer,  '  How  long 
are  ye  without  understanding?  It  is  your  double-mindedness 
that  maketh  you  of  no  understanding,  and  because  your  heart 
is  not  set  towards  the  Lord.'  I  answered  and  said  unto  him 
again,  '  From  thee,  Sir,  we  shall  learn  the  matters  more  ac- 
curately.' '  Listen  ',  saith  he,  '  concerning  the  three  forms  of 
which  thou  inquirest.  In  the  first  vision  wherefore  did  she  ap- 
pear to  thee  an  aged  woman  and  seated  on  a  chair?  Because 
your  spirit  was  aged,  and  already  decayed,  and  had  no  power, 
by  reason  of  your  infirmities  and  acts  of  double-mindedness. 
For  as  aged  people,  having  no  longer  hope  of  renewing  their 
youth,  expect  nothing  else  but  to  fall  asleep,  so  ye  also,  being 
weakened  with  the  affairs  of  this  world,  gave  yourselves  over 
to  repining  and  cast  not  your  cares  on  the  Lord ;  but  your  spirit 
was  broken,  and  ye  were  aged  by  your  sorrows.  .  .  .  But 
in  the  second  vision  thou  sawest  her  standing  and  with  her 
countenance  more  youthful  and  more  gladsome  than  before, 
but  her  flesh  and  her  hair  aged.  .  .  .  For  he  (the  Lord) 
had  compassion  on  you  and  renewed  your  spirits  and  ye  laid 
aside  your  maladies.  .  .  .  And  therefore  he  showed  you 
the  building  of  the  tower.  .  .  .  But  in  the  third  vision 
thou  sawest  her  younger  and  fair  and  gladsome  and  her  form 
fair.  .  .  .  So  ye  have  received  a  renewal  of  your  spirits 
by  seeing  these  good  things.     And  whereas  thou  sawest  her 

""Fw.  ii,  2. 

"*E.  g.  Vis.  ii,  6;  iii,  10;  iii,  11 ;  Sim.  i;  Sim.  vi,  i ;  vii;  ix,  24,  28,  29,  31, 
32,  33;  X,  I,  4;  et.  al. 


540  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 

seated  upon  a  couch,  the  position  is  a  firm  one.'  "  ^^*  The  real 
mind  of  the  writer  is  expressed  in  the  words  of  the  Angel  of 
Repentance :  "  All  these  things  which  are  written  above,  I, 
the  Shepherd,  the  Angel  of  Repentance,  have  declared  and 
spoken  to  the  servants  of  God."^'^^  These  servants  of  God 
with  their  virtue  and  weakness,  their  steadfastness  and  doubt, 
their  simplicity  and  double-mindedness,  their  hope  and  their 
fear,  are  all  to  be  found  within  the  figure  of  Hermas. 

Some  striking  omissions  in  the  Shepherd  have  been  fre- 
quently pointed  out,  and  occasionally  used  to  draw  unwar- 
ranted conclusions  regarding  the  churclvof  the  time.  There 
is  not  a  single  quotation  from  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament. 
There  is  no  direct  reference  to  any  of  the  events  of  our  Lord's 
life,  or  to  any  of  his  teachings.  The  words  "  Jesus  ",  "  Christ  ", 
"  Jew  ",  "  Israel  ",  "  Christian  ",  "  Gospel  ",  "  baptism  ",  "  Eu- 
charist ",  "  resurrection ",  are  all  absent,  and  the  word 
"  grace  "  though  found  is  not  used  in  the  Christian  sense. ^''^ 
Had  these  omissions  been  fewer  or  less  striking,  it  might  be 
possible  to  refer  them  to  accident  or  ignorance,  but  the  matter 
is  important  enough  to  demand  an  explanation  which  will  ac- 
count for  them  all.  Is  it  possible  to  conceive  of  a  Christian 
work,  written  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  in- 
tended, not  for  outsiders,  but  for  the  Christians  themselves, 
from  which  all  these  words — some  of  them  catch-words  of  uni- 
versal familiarity — are  excluded?  To  say  that  the  author  was 
ignorant  of  them  would  be  absurd.  To  say  he  was  not  inter- 
ested in  them  is  scarcely  less  tenable.  In  most  cases  the  idea  is 
present  and  only  the  familiar  designation  absent.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  of  his  knowledge  both  of  the  Old  Testament  and 

"*  Vis.  iii,  10  f.  ""  Sim,,  ix,  33. 

"*To  say  that  the  absence  of  quotations  from  the  New  Testament 
proves  that  this  was  not  yet  on  a  par  with  the  Old  (e.  g.  Holtzmann,  Ein- 
leitung  in  d.  NT.  p.  no)  is  merely  frivolous.  To  explain  the  absence  of 
any  citation  (except  that  from  the  book  of  Eldad  and  Modat)  on  the 
theory  that  revelation  needs  no  other  authority  to  support  it  (Weinel  in 
Hennecke,  Neutest.  Apokr.,  pp.  228  f.)  or  that  Hermas  was  commanded  to 
tell  what  he  had  seen  not  what  he  had  read  (Zahn,  Hirt.  d.  Hermas,  p. 
P-  393)  >  might  suffice  if  this  were  the  only  striking  omission.  And  yet  may 
not  the  Shepherd  have  appealed  to  Scripture  quite  as  really  by  suggestion 
(see  even  Holtzmann's  view,  note  178)  as  if  he  had  formally  cited  it? 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  541 

of  part  of  the  New.^"^^  The  idea  of  grace  is  found  in  his 
frequent  references  to  the  mercy  of  God  in  forgiving  sins,  and 
sending  repentance.  Jesus  Christ  moves  all  through  the  work 
under  the  title  of  "  Son  of  God  ".  Baptism  api>ears  frequently, 
only  without  the  name.  We  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that 
these  omissions  were  deliberate  and  intentional — 3.  thing  prac- 
tically impossible  if  the  Shepherd  be  the  naive  record  of  the 
experience  of  a  vacillating  though  devout  prophet,  but  which 
finds  a  simple  and  natural  explanation  if  it  is  an  allegory. 
For  an  allegory  is  of  the  same  nature  as  a  puzzle  and  has  the 
same  sort  of  charm.  The  truth  is  concealed  behind  unusual 
words  and  images,  and  the  reader  has  the  same  satisfaction 
in  searching  for  it,  as  in  solving  a  rebus  or  an  acrostic.  It 
appeals  to  one  of  the  strongest  of  human  passions — curiosity, 
and  it  has  the  merit  of  presenting  truth  in  a  new  and  inter- 
esting guise.  Of  course  the  puzzle  may  be  easy  or  difficult  to 
solve,  the  veil  of  the  allegory  easy  to  lift  or  almost  impene- 
trable. This  will  depend  upon  the  author  and  his  estimate  of 
his  readers.  John  Bunyan  frequently  quotes  the  Bible  ver- 
batim. The  Shepherd  never  does,  but  he  frequently  suggests 
passages  in  such  a  manner  that  we  wonder  how  he  escaped 
doing  so.^*^^  But  whether  easy  of  solution  or  heavily  veiled,  an 
allegory  to  be  an  allegory  must  make  some  pretense  of  being 
an  enigma,  and  this  we  think  is  the  most  natural  explanation 
of  these  remarkable  omissions. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  discuss  the  merits  of  the 
Shepherd  either  as  a  Christian  book  of  instruction  or  as  an 
allegory.  The  part  it  played  in  the  early  church  is  sufficient 
proof  that  the  author  understood  his  contemporaries.  What 
we  do  wish  to  point  out  afresh  is  that  in  interpreting  it  we 
must  begin,  not  with  the  exceedingly  human  Hermas  who 
lives  so  delightfully  on  every  page,  but  with  the  author  who 
could  delineate  such  a  character,  and  use  it  in  correcting  the 

*"  See  The  New  Testament  in  the  Apostolic  Fathers,  pp.  105  ff.  Zahn, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  391  ff.  and  notes  to  critical  editions. 

^'"'Wenn  er  fast  ermiidende  Umschreibungen  von  Jac.  i,  6-8  {Maud,  ix) 
und  Jac,  iv,  7-12  (Mand.  xii,  2-6)  gibt,  ohne  dass  es  ihm  in  den  Sinn 
kame  die  betreffenden  Stellen  selbst  zu  citeren."  Holtzmann,  Einl.  in  d. 
NT.  p.  no. 


542 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD 


faults  and  failings  of  his  own  times.  The  Shepherd  was 
written  from  above  down,  and  not  the  reverse.  ^^"  This  is 
supported  by  the  testimony  of  the  Muratori  Fragment  as  to 
its  authorship,  and  by  the  fact — fact  at  least  so  far  as  we  can 
judge — that  it  was  always  regarded  by  the  Roman  church  as 
suitable  for  edification.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  remem- 
ber its  undoubted  resemblance  to  the  popular  pseudo-apocalyp- 
ses of  the  time,  and  its  possible  relation  to  the  Hermetic  liter- 
ature. This  coupled  with  its  lack  of  prominence  in  the  liter- 
ature of  the  Roman  church  for  some  decades  after  its  publica- 
tion suggests  that.it  was  intended  for  the  lower  classes.  In 
it  they  received  more  wholesome  teaching  in  the  style  of  the 
popular  religious  literature  of  the  day.  It  is  in  the  form  of 
a  revelation  but  it  roundly  condemns  those  that  seek  revela- 
tions. ^^^  It  is  an  imitation  of  apocalypses,  but  it  cries  out  in 
horror  at  anyone  wishing  to  pierce  the  mystery  to  whose  so- 
lution the  other  apocalypses  were  devoted.^®^  It  reminds  us 
of  the  Hermetic  literature  but  it  prohibits  all  attempts  to  un- 
derstand the  mysteries  which  called  this  class  of  literature  into 
being. ^^^  This  consideration  immediately  brings  into  promi- 
nence the  word-bandying  that  forms  no  inconsiderable  ix>rtion 
of  the  work,  and  the  many  accusations  of  foolishness  and 
stupidity  take  on  real  meaning.  Rome  already  was  requiring 
implicit  obedience  of  her  humbler  members.  The  Hermas 
that  wishes  to  solve  mysteries,  asks  questions,  has  his  opinions, 
dares  to  dispute  with  his  guide,  is  cried  down,  snubbed  and 
held  up  to  ridicule.  When  he  timorously  doubted  his  ability  to 
keep  the  commandments  the  Church  could  swell  with  anger  and 
forbid  such  impious  thoughts,^^^  when  he  was  troubled  over 
his  unknown  sin  of  ^vil  desire,  she  could  smile — it  was  a  little 
sin — and  assure  him  that  God  was  not  angry  with  him  for 
that^®*    Just  so  we  treat  little  children. 

We  may  venture  now  to  state  positively  what  seems  to  be 
the  theory  of  the  origin  and  early  fortunes  of  the  Shepherd 

*"  This  is  the  unexpressed  assumption  back  of  Prof.  Lake's  article  in  the 
Harvard  Theological  Review,  Jan.  191 1,  pp.  25  ff. 
"*  Vis.  iii,  3,  10,  13 ;  Sim.  v,  4  f . 
'""Vis.  iii.  8.  ^""Sim.  ix,  I  f. 

'""Mand.  xii,  3  f.  "^  Vis.  i,  i  ff. 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  SHEPHERD  543 

most  consonant  with  the  available  evidence.  It  was  written 
by  a  certain  Hermas,  who  was  the  brother  of  Pius,  bishop  of 
Rome,  and  so  presumably  close  to  the  leaders  of  the  church. 
In  the  words  of  the  Church  and  the  Shepherd  and  the  other 
heavenly  messengers  we  are  to  see  the  official  teaching  of  the 
church  of  Rome.  It  was  intended  chiefly  for  the  edification  of 
the  lower  class  of  church  members,  who  are  typified  in  the 
figure  of  Hermas  within  the  story.  It  is  in  the  form  of  a  reve- 
lation in  order  to  compete  with  the  popular  apocalyptic  and 
cryptic  literature  of  the  time,  to  the  teachings  and  attitude  of 
which  it  is  opposed.  There  is  no  evidence  that  the  author  in- 
tended it  to  be  taken  for  revelation,  nor  that  the  Roman  church 
did  so  mistake  it.  Its  immediate  popularity  is  indubitable  for  it 
soon  was  known  far  beyond  the  place  of  its  origin.  In  the 
West  it  circulated  chiefly  among  the  common  people,  for  it 
appears  very  rarely  in  the  better  literature,  and  in  Africa  any- 
way was  regarded  with  superstitious  reverence  by  the  masses, 
who  were  sharply  rebuked  by  their  leader.  The  correspond- 
ence of  the  author's  name  with  that  of  a  contemporary  of  St. 
Paul,  and  the  literary  form  of  the  work,  easily  suggested  an 
erroneous  view  of  its  origin  and  nature.  In  Alexandria  even 
the  church  leaders  accepted  it  as  a  genuine  revelation,  one  of 
them  definitely  ascribing  it  to  St.  Paul's  friend.  The  real  use- 
fulness of  the  book  was  imperilled  by  such  extravagant  claims, 
and  the  Roman  authorities,  as  represented  in  the  Muratori 
Fragment,  speaking  out  of  full  knowledge  of  the  matter,  at- 
tempted to  restore  it  to  its  original  place  and  function  in  the 
church. 


JESUS  AND  PAUL 
John  Gresham  Machen 


Importance  of  the  problem. — It  is  better  to  begin  the  discussion  with  Paul, 
because  Paul  is  more  easily  known  than  "Jesus,  and  because  there 
is  direct  testimony  as  to  Paul's  relation  to  Jesus. — The  original 
apostles  regarded  Paul  as  an  innovator  neither  with  respect  to 
freedom  from  the  law  nor  with  respect  to  the  person  of  Christ. — 
Paul  does  not  deny  dependence  on  tradition  for  the  facts  of  the 
life  of  Jesus. — The  paucity  of  references  in  the  epistles  to  words 
and  deeds  of  Jesus  has  been  exaggerated  and  misinterpreted. — 
Both  by  his  contemporaries,  therefore,  and  by  Paul  himself,  Paul 
is  represented  as  a  true  disciple  of  Jesus. — This  conclusion  is  not 
overthrown  by  comparison  with  the  Gospels. — Such  comparison 
is  valuable,  because  the  exalted  Christology  of  the  Gospels  is  not 
due  to  Pauline  influence. — ^The  formation  of  this  Christology 
is  inexplicable  upon  naturalistic  principles. — The  harmony  be- 
tween Jesus  and  Paul  extends  even  to  what  is  regarded  by  modern 
criticism  as  characteristic  of  Jesus — for  example,  the  fatherhood 
of  God,  and  love  as  the  fulfilling  of  the  law. — But  the  essence  of 
Paulinism  is  communion  with  the  risen  Christ,  not  imitation  of 
the  earthly  Jesus. — Paul  was  a  disciple  of  Jesus  only  if  Jesus  was 
a  supernatural  person. 


JESUS  AND  PAUL^ 

The  Apostle  Paul  is  the  greatest  teacher  of  the  Christian 
Church.  True,  he  has  not  always  been  fully  understood.  The 
legalism  that  he  combatted  during  his  lifetime  soon  established 
itself  among  his  converts,  and  finally  celebrated  a  triumph  in 
the  formation  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  keen  edge  of  his 
dialectic  was  soon  blunted.  But  however  his  ideas  may  have 
been  injured  in  transmission,  they  were  never  altogether  de- 
stroyed. Much  was  forgotten;  but  what  remained  was  the 
life  of  the  Church.  And  the  great  revivals  were  revivals  of 
Paulinism.  Protestantism. — in  its  practical  piety  as  well  as 
in  its  theology — was  simply  a  rediscovery  of  Paul. 

Yet  Paul  has  never  been  accepted  for  his  own  sake.  Men 
have  never  come  to  him  for  an  independent  solution  of  the 
riddle  of  the  universe.  Simply  as  a  religious  philosopher, 
he  is  unsatisfactory ;  for  his  philosophy  is  rooted  in  one  definite 
fact.  He  has  been  listened  to  not  as  a  philosopher,  but  as  a 
witness — a  witness  to  Jesus  Christ.  His  teaching  has  been 
accepted  only  on  one  condition — that  he  speak  as  a  faithful 
disciple  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

The  question  of  the  relation  between  Jesus  and  Paul  is  there- 
fore absolutely  fundamental.  Paul  has  always  been  regarded 
as  the  greatest  disciple  of  Jesus.  If  so,  well  and  good.  The 
Christian  Church  may  then  go  forward  as  it  has  done  be- 

*  The  following  paper  is  merely  a  sketch.  It  raises  many  questions  which 
it  does  not  answer.  It  attempts  no  exposition  of  recent  discussion.  Sug- 
gestions have  been  received  from  many  sources,  but  it  is  hoped  that  a 
general  acknowledgment  of  indebtedness  will  render  a  series  of  footnotes 
unnecessary.  The  following  list  of  monographs,  pamphlets  and  articles 
is  far  from  exhaustive: — Paret,  Paulus  und  Jesus,  in  Jahrbucher  fur 
deutsche  Theologie,  iii  (1859),  pp.  1-85;  Wendt,  Die  Lehre  des  Paulus 
verglichen  mit  der  Lehre  Jesu,  in  Zeitschrift  fiir  Theologie  und  Kirche^ 
iii  (1894),  PP-  1-78;  Hilgenfeld,  Jesus  und  Paulus,  in  Zeitschrift  fiir  wissen^ 


548  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

fore.  But  in  recent  years  there  is  a  tendency  to  dissociate 
Paul  from  Jesus.  A  recent  historian  has  entitled  Paul  "  the 
second  founder  of  Christianity  ".  If  that  be  correct,  then 
Christianity  is  facing  the  greatest  crisis  in  its  history.  For — 
let  us  not  deceive  ourselves — if  Paul  is  independent  of  Jesus, 
he  can  no  longer  be  a  teacher  of  the  Church.  Christianity  is 
founded  upon  Christ  and  only  Christ.  Paulinism  has  never 
been  accepted  upon  any  other  supposition  than  that  it  repro- 
duces the  mind  of  Christ.  If  that  supposition  is  incorrect — if 
Paulinism  is  derived  not  from  Jesus  Christ,  but  from  other 
sources — then  it  must  be  uprooted  from  the  life  of  the  Church. 
But  that  is  more  than  reform — it  is  revolution.  Compared 
with  that  upheaval,  the  reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century 
is  as  nothing. 

schaftliche  Theologie,  xxxvii  (1894),  PP-  481-541;  Feine,  Jesus  Christus 
und  Paulus,  1902 ;  Bruckner,  Die  Entstehung  der  paulinischen  Christologie, 
1903,  Zum  Thema  Jesus  und  Paulus,  in  Zeitschrift  fur.  die  neutestament- 
tiche  Wissenschaft,  vii  (1906),  pp.  112-119,  Der  Apostel  Paulus  als  Zeuge 
wider  das  Christusbild  der  Evangelien,  in  Protestantische  Monatshefte, 
X  (1906),  pp.  352-364;  Wrede,  Paulus,  1905;  Vischer,  Jesus  und  Paulus,  in 
Theologische  Rundschau,  viii  (1905),  pp.  129-143,  173-188;  Kolbing,  Die 
geistige  Einwirkung  der  Person  Jesu  auf  Paulus,  1906;  Kaftan,  Jesus 
und  Paulus,  1906;  Ihmels,  Jesus  und  Paulus,  in  Neue  kirchliche  Zeit- 
schrift, xvii  (1906),  pp.  452-516;  Pfleiderer,  Der  moderne  Jesuskultus,  in 
Protestantische  Monatshefte,  x  (1906),  pp.  169-182;  Johnson,  Was  Paul 
the  Founder  of  Christianity?,  in  Princeton  Theological  Review,  v  (1907), 
pp.  398-422;  Jiilicher,  Paulus  und  Jesus,  1907;  Meyer,  Wer  hat  das 
Christentum  begriindet,  Jesus  oder  Paulus f,  1907 ;  Sanday,  art.  "  Paul ", 
in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  Christ  and  the  Gospels,  ii  (1908),  Appendix, 
pp.  886-892 ;  Dunkmann,  "  Bedeutet  die  Paulinische  Predigt  vom  Kreuz  eine 
Veranderung  des  einfachen  Evangeliums  Jesu?",  in  Evangelische  Kirchen- 
Zeitung,  82  (1908),  columns  61-67,  81-86,  101-104,  121-127;  W.  Morgan, 
The  Jesus-Paul  Controversy,  in  Expository  Times,  xx  (1908-1909),  pp. 
9-12,  55-58;  Weiss,  Paulus  und  Jesus,  1909;  Olschewski,  Die  Wurzeln  der 
paulinischen  Christologie,  1909;  G.  Mdlligan,  Paulinism  and  the  Religion 
of  Jesus,  in  Expositor,  1909  (i),  pp.  534-546;  Scott,  Jesus  and  Paul,  in 
Cambridge  Biblical  Essays,  1909;  Holtzmann,  Zum  Thema  "Jesus  und 
Paulus",  in  Protestantische  Monatshefte,  iv  (1900),  pp.  463-468,  xi  (1907), 
pp.  313-323,  Paulus  als  Zeuge  wider  die  Christusmythe  von  Arthur  Drews, 
in  Christliche  Welt,  xxiv  (1910),  columns  151-160.  Compare  also  Warfield, 
The  "Two  Natures  "  and  Recent  Christological  Speculation,  in  American 
Journal  of  Theology,  xv  (i9ii)»  PP.  Z37-3^i,  546-568. 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  549 

At  first  sight,  the  danger  appears  to  be  trifling.  The  voices 
that  would  separate  Paul  from  Jesus  have  been  drowned  by 
a  chorus  of  protest.  In  making  Paul  and  not  Jesus  the  true 
founder  of  Christianity,  Wrede  is  as  little  representative  of 
the  main  trend  of  modern  investigation  as  he  is  when  he  elimi- 
nates the  Messianic  element  from  the  consciousness  of  Jesus. 
Measured  by  the  direct  assent  which  he  has  received,  Wrede  is 
a  negligeable  quantity.  But  that  is  but  a  poor  measure  of  his 
importance.  The  true  significance  of  Wrede's  ''  Paul "  is 
that  it  has  merely  made  explicit  what  was  implicit  before. 
The  entire  modern  reconstruction  of  primitive  Christianity 
leads  logically  to  Wrede's  startling  pronouncement.  Modern 
liberalism  has  produced  a  Jesus  who  has  really  but  little  in 
common  with  Paul.  Wrede  has  but  drawn  the  conclusion. 
Paul  was  no  disciple  of  the  liberal  Jesus.  Wrede  has  merely 
had  the  courage  to  say  so. 

This  essential  harmony  between  Wrede  and  his  opponents 
appears  even  in  some  of  the  criticisms  to  which  he  has  been 
subjected.  No  doubt  these  criticisms  are  salutary.  They  fill 
out  omissions,  and  correct  exaggerations.  But  they  obscure 
the  issue.  In  general,  their  refutation  of  Wrede  amounts  to 
little  more  than  this — Paul's  theology  is  abandoned,  in  order 
to  save  his  religion.  His  theology,  it  is  admitted,  was  de- 
rived from  extra-Christian  sources;  but  in  his  practical  piety 
he  was  a  true  disciple  of  Jesus.  Such  a  distinction  is  thor- 
oughly vicious ;  it  is  contradicted  in  no  uncertain  tones  by  the 
Pauline  Epistles.  Where  is  it  that  the  current  of  Paul's  re- 
ligious experience  becomes  overpowering,  so  that  even  after 
the  lapse  of  centuries,  even  through  the  dull  medium  of  the 
printed  page,  it  sweeps  the  heart  of  the  sympathetic  reader  on 
with  it  in  a  mighty  flood?  It  is  not  in  the  ethical  admon- 
itions. It  is  not  in  the  discussions  of  the  practical  problems 
of  the  Christian  life.  It  is  not  even  in  the  inspired  encomium 
of  Christian  love.  But  it  is  in  the  great  theological  passages 
of  the  epistles — the  second  chapter  of  Galatians,  the  fifth 
chapter  of  Second  Corinthians,  the  fifth  to  the  eighth  chap- 
ters of  Romans.  In  these  passages,  the  religious  experience 
and  the  theology  of  Paul  are  blended  in  a  union  which  no 
critical  analysis  can  dissolve.     Furthermore,  if  it  is  impossi- 


550  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

ble  to  separate  Pauline  piety  and  Pauline  theology  in  the  life 
of  Paul  himself,  it  is  just  as  impossible  to  separate  them  in 
the  life  of  the  Church  of  to-day.  Thus  far,  at  least,  all  at- 
tempts at  accomplishing  it  have  resulted  in  failure.  Liberal 
Christianity  has  sometimes  tried  to  reproduce  Paul's  religion 
apart  from  his  theology.  But  thus  far  it  has  produced  noth- 
ing which  in  the  remotest  degree  resembles  the  model. 

In  determining  whether  Paul  was  a  disciple  of  Jesus,  the 
whole  Paul  must  be  kept  in  view — not  the  theology  apart  from 
the  warm  religious  life  that  pulses  through  it,  and  not  the 
religious  emotion  apart  from  its  basis  in  theology.  Theology 
apart  from  religion,  or  religion  apart  from  theology — either 
is  an  empty  abstraction.  The  religion  and  the  theology  of 
Paul  stand  or  fall  together.  If  one  is  derived  from  Jesus, 
probably  the  other  is  also. 

In  discussing  the  relation  between  Jesus  and  Paul,  it  is 
better  to  begin  with  Paul.  For,  in  the  first  place,  Paul  is  more 
easily  known  than  Jesus.  That  will  be  admitted  on  all  sides. 
Jesus  wrote  nothing;  all  the  extant  records  of  his  words  are 
the  reports  of  others.  The  trustworthiness  of  the  records  of 
his  life  is  at  present  a  matter  of  dispute.  Yet  even  if  the  most 
favorable  estimate  of  the  Gospel  narratives  be  adopted,  Jesus 
remains  far  more  incomprehensible  than  Paul.  Indeed  it  is 
just  when  the  Grospel  picture  is  accepted  in  its  entirety  that 
the  sense  of  mystery  in  the  presence  of  Jesus  becomes  most 
overpowering. 

For  the  life  of  Paul,  on  the  other  hand,  the  historian  is  in 
possession  of  sources  which  are  not  only  trustworthy,  but  uni- 
versally admitted  to  be  trustworthy.  At  least  seven  of  the 
Pauline  Epistles — i  Thessalonians,  Galatians,  i  and  2  Corin- 
thians, Romans,  Philippians,  and  Philemon — are  now  assigned 
by  all  except  a  few  extremists  to  Paul  himself ;  and  the  critical 
doubts  with  regard  to  three  of  the  others  are  gradually  being 
dispelled.  In  general,  the  disputed  epistles  are  not  of  funda- 
mental importance  for  determining  the  relation  of  Paul  to 
Jesus.  Colossians,  perhaps,  forms  the  only  exception,  and  it  is 
just  Colossians  that  is  most  commonly  accepted  as  Pauline.  All 
the  characteristic  features  of  Paul's  thinking  appear  within  the 
homologoumena;  and  it  is  the  characteristic  features  alone 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  551 

which  can  determine  the  general  question  whether  Paul  was  a 
disciple  of  Jesus. 

With  regard  to  the  book  of  Acts  as  a  source  for  the  study 
of  Paul,  there  is  more  difference  of  opinion;  and  the  difference 
is  of  more  importance  for  the  question  now  in  hand.  But  three 
remarks  can  be  made.  In  the  first  place,  those  sections  of  Acts 
where  the  first  person  plural  is  used  are  universally  regarded  as 
the  work  of  an  eye-witness.  In  the  second  place,  the  frame- 
work— the  account  of  external  events  in  the  life  of  Paul — is  for 
the  most  part  accepted.  In  the  third  place,  the  tendency  of 
recent  criticism  is  decidedly  towards  a  higher  estimate  of  the 
general  representation  of  Paul.  The  conciliatory  attitude 
toward  the  Jews,  which  the  book  of  Acts  attributes  to  Paul,  is 
no  longer  regarded  as  due  altogether  to  an  "  irenic  "  purpose 
on  the  part  of  the  historian. 

The  sources  for  the  life  of  Paul  are  insufficient,  indeed,  for 
a  complete  biography.  For  the  period  up  to  the  conversion,  the 
extant  information  is  of  the  most  general  kind,  and  after  the 
conversion  some  fifteen  years  elapse  before  anything  like  a 
connected  narrative  can  be  constructed.  Even  from  the  years 
of  the  so-called  missionary  journeys,  only  a  bare  summary  has 
been  preserved,  with  vivid,  detailed  narratives  only  here  and 
there.  Finally,  the  close  of  Paul's  life  is  shrouded  in  obscurity. 
But  what  the  sources  lack  in  quantity  they  make  up  in  quality. 
Paul  was  gifted  with  a  remarkable  power  of  self -revelation, 
which  has  been  exercised  in  his  epistles  to  the  fullest  extent. 
Free  from  self-centred  vanity,  without  the  slightest  indelicacy, 
without  a  touch  of  morbid  introspection,  he  has  yet  revealed  the 
very  secrets  of  his  heart.  Not  only  the  exquisite  delicacy  of 
feeling,  the  fine  play  of  affection,  the  consecrated  anger,  the 
keen  practical  judgment  are  open  before  us,  but  also  the  deep- 
est springs  of  the  tremendous  religious  experience.  The  Paul- 
ine Epistles  make  Paul  one  of  the  best-known  men  of  history. 
We  might  be  able  to  account,  in  an  external  way,  for  every  day 
and  hour  of  his  life,  and  yet  not  know  him  half  so  well. 

As  thus  revealed,  Paul  is  comprehensible.  With  all  his 
greatness,  almost  immeasurably  exalted  as  he  is  above  the 
generality  of  mankind,  he  yet  possesses  nothing  which  any  man 
might  not  conceivably  possess.     Starting  from  the  common 


552  JESUS  AND   PAUL 

misery  of  sin,  he  attained  to  a  peace  with  God,  which,  again, 
has  been  shared  by  humble  Christians  of  all  ages.  His  com- 
mission as  apostle  exceeds  in  dignity  and  importance  that  of 
other  disciples  of  Christ,  but  does  not  free  him  from  human 
limitations.  It  was  Christ's  strength  which  was  made  perfect 
in  weakness.  In  all  essential  features,  the  religious  experience 
of  Paul  may  be  imitated  by  every  Christian.  Jesus,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  full  of  mystery.  Of  course  the  mystery  may  be 
ignored.  It  is  ignored  by  Wrede,  when  he  denies  to  Jesus  the 
consciousness  of  his  Messiahship.  But  even  by  the  most  thor- 
ough-going modern  naturalism,  that  is  felt  to  be  a  desperate 
measure.  The  Messianic  consciousness  is  rooted  too  deep  in 
the  sources  ever  to  be  removed  by  historical  criticism.  That 
Jesus  lived  at  all  is  hardly  more  certain  than  that  he  thought 
himself  to  be  the  Messiah.  But  the  Messianic  consciousness 
of  Jesus  is  a  profound  mystery.  It  would  be  no  mystery  if 
Jesus  were  an  ordinary  fanatic  or  unbalanced  visionary. 
Among  the  many  false  Messiahs  who  championed  their  claims 
in  the  first  century,  there  may  well  have  been  some  who  de- 
ceived themselves  as  well  as  others.  But  Jesus  was  no  ordinary 
fanatic — no  megalomaniac.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  the  moral 
ideal  of  the  race.  His  calmness,  unselfishness,  and  strength 
have  produced  an  impression  which  the  lapse  of  time  has  done 
nothing  to  obliterate.  It  was  such  a  man  who  supposed  him- 
self to  be  the  Son  of  Man  who  was  to  come  with  the  clouds  of 
heaven !  Considered  in  the  light  of  the  character  of  Jesus,  the 
Messianic  consciousness  of  Jesus  is  the  profoundest  of  prob- 
lems. It  is  true,  the  problem  can  be  solved.  It  can  be  solved 
by  supposing  that  Jesus'  own  estimate  of  his  person  was 
true — by  recognizing  in  Jesus  a  supernatural  person.  But  the 
acceptance  of  the  supernatural  is  not  easy.  For  the  modern 
mind  it  involves  nothing  short  of  a  Copernican  revolution. 
And  until  that  step  is  taken,  the  person  of  Jesus  cannot  be 
understood.  Paul,  on  the  other  hand,  is  more  easily  com- 
prehended. To  a  certain  extent,  his  religious  experience  can 
be  understood,  at  least  in  an  external  way,  even  by  one  who 
supposes  it  to  be  founded  not  on  truth  but  on  error.  Paul, 
therefore,  may  perhaps  be  a  stepping-stone  on  the  way  to  a 
comprehension  of  Jesus. 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  553 

In  the  first  place,  then,  the  investigation  of  the  relation  be- 
tween Jesus  and  Paul  should  begin  with  Paul  rather  than  with 
Jesus,  because  Paul  is,  if  not  better  known  than  Jesus,  at  least 
more  easily  known.  In  the  second  place,  Paul  should  be 
studied  before  Jesus  just  because  he  lived  after  Jesus.  If  the 
object  of  the  investigation  were  Jesus  and  Paul,  taken  sep- 
arately, then  it  would  be  better  to  begin  with  the  earlier  rather 
than  with  the  later  of  the  two ;  but  since  it  is  the  relation  be- 
tween Jesus  and  Paul  that  is  to  be  studied,  it  is  better  method  to 
begin  with  Paul.  For  the  investigator  need  not  rely  merely  on 
a  comparison  of  Jesus  and  Paul.  If  Paul  was  dependent 
upon  Jesus,  the  fact  may  be  expected  to  appear  in  direct  state- 
ments of  Paul  himself,  and  in  the  attitude  of  his  contempor- 
aries toward  him.  Did  Paul  feel  himself  to  be  an  innovator 
with  respect  to  Jesus ;  and  was  he  regarded  as  an  innovator  by 
the  earlier  disciples  of  Jesus  ? 

The  latter  question,  at  any  rate,  cannot  be  answered  off- 
hand. There  were  undoubtedly  some  men  in  the  primitive 
church  who  combatted  Paul  in  the  name  of  conservatism. 
These  were  the  Judaizers,  who  regarded  Paul's  doctrine  of 
Christian  freedom  as  a  dangerous  innovation.  The  Jewish  law, 
they  said,  must  be  maintained  even  among  Gentile  Christians. 
Faith  in  Christ  is  supplementary  to  it,  not  subversive  of  it. 
Were  the  Judaizers  justified  in  their  conservatism?  Were  they 
right  in  regarding  Paul  as  an  innovator?  What  was  the  rela- 
tion between  these  Judaizers  and  the  original  apostles,  who  had 
been  disciples  of  Jesus  in  Galilee  ?  These  are  among  the  most 
important  questions  in  apostolic  history.  They  have  divided 
students  of  the  New  Testament  into  hostile  camps.  F.  C. 
Baur  supposed  that  the  relation  between  Judaizers  and  original 
apostles  was  in  the  main  friendly.  The  original  apostles, 
though  they  could  not  quite  close  their  eyes  to  the  hand  of  God 
as  manifested  in  the  successes  of  Paul,  belong  nevertheless  in- 
wardly with  the  Judaizers  rather  than  with  Paul.  The  funda- 
mental fact  of  apostolic  history  is  a  conflict  between  Paul  and 
the  original  apostles,  between  Gentile  Christianity  and  Jewish 
Christianity.  The  history  of  early  Christianity  is  the  history  of 
the  development  and  final  adjustment  of  that  conflict.  The 
Catholic  Church  of  the  close  of  the  second  century  is  the  result 


554  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

of  a  compromise  between  Pauline  Christianity  and  the  Christ- 
ianity of  the  original  apostles.  This  reconstruction  of  early 
Christian  history  was  opposed  by  Albrecht  Ritschl.  According 
to  Ritschl,  the  conflict  in  the  apostolic  age  was  not  between 
Paul  and  the  original  apostles,  but  between  apostolic  Christian- 
ity— including  both  Paul  and  the  original  apostles — on  the  one 
side,  and  Judaistic  Christianity — the  Christianity  of  the  Judais- 
tic  opponents  of  Paul^ — on  the  other.  Specifically  Jewish 
Christianity  exerted  no  considerable  influence  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Qhurch.  The  Old  Catholic  Church  of  the  close  of 
the  second  century  was  the  result  not  of  "a  compromise  between 
Jewish  Christianity  and  Gentile  Christianity,  but  of  a  natural 
process  of  degeneration  from  Pauline  Christianity  on  purely 
Gentile  Christian  ground.  The  Gentile  Christian  world  was 
unable  to  understand  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  grace.  Christian- 
ity came  to  be  regarded  as  a  new  law — but  that  was  due,  not  to 
the  rehabilitation  of  the  Mosaic  law  as  a  concession  to  Jewish 
Christianity,  but  to  the  tendency  of  the  average  man  toward 
legalism  in  religion.  As  against  Baur,  Hamack  belongs  with 
Ritschl.  Like  Ritschl,  he  denies  to  Jewish  Christianity  any 
considerable  influence  upon  the  development  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  The  Church  of  200  A.  D.  owes  its  difference  from 
Paul,  not  to  a  compromise  with  Jewish  Christianity,  but  to  the 
intrusion  of  Greek  habits  of  thought. 

If  Baur  was  correct,  then  Paul  was  probably  no  true  disciple 
of  Jesus.  For  Baur  brought  Paul  into  fundamental  conflict 
with  the  men  who  had  stood  nearest  to  Jesus.  But  Baur  was 
not  correct.  His  reconstruction  of  apostolic  history  was  ar- 
rived at  by  neglecting  all  sources  except  the  epistles  to  the 
Galatians  and  Corinthians  and  then  misinterpreting  these.  He 
failed  to  do  justice  to  the  "  right  hand  of  fellowship  "  (Gal.  ii. 
9)  which  the  pillars  of  the  Jerusalem  Church  gave  to  Paul. 
And  the  account  of  Paul's  rebuke  of  Peter  in  Antioch,  ap- 
parently the  strongest  evidence  of  a  conflict  between  Paul  and 
the  original  apostles,  is  rather  to  be  regarded  as  evidence  to  the 
contrary.  For  Paul  rebukes  Peter  for  hypocrisy — not  for  false 
opinions,  but  for  concealing  his  correct  opinions  for  fear  of 
men.  In  condemning  his  practice,  Paul  approves  his  principles.^ 
Peter  had  therefore  been  in  fundamental  agreement  with  Paul. 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  555 

As  for  the  Judaizers  in  Corinth,  their  opinions  are  as  uncertain 
as  their  relation  to  the  original  apostles.  It  is  not  certain  that 
they  combatted  Paul's  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  and 
it  is  not  certain  that  they  had  any  kind  of  endorsement  from 
the  original  apostles.  Surely  the  apostles  were  not  the  only 
ones  who  could  have  given  them  "  letters  of  recommendation  " 
(2  Cor.  iii.  i). 

Baur's  thesis,  then,  was  insufficiently  grounded.  One  fact, 
however,  still  requires  explanation — the  appeal  of  the  Judaizers 
to  the  original  apostles  against  Paul.  It  is  not  enough  to  say 
simply  that  the  appeal  of  the  Judaizers  was  a  false  appeal.  For 
if  the  original  apostles  were  as  Pauline  as  Paul  himself,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  why  they  should  have  been  preferred  to  Paul  by 
the  anti-Pauline  party.  Surely  the  original  apostles  must  have 
given  the  Judaizers  at  least  some  color  of  support;  otherwise 
the  Judaizers  could  never  have  appealed  to  them.  Until  this 
appeal  is  explained,  Baur  remains  unrefuted.  But  the  explana- 
tion is  not  difficult  to  find.  It  was  the  life,  not  the  teaching,  of 
the  original  apostles  which  appeared  to  support  the  contentions 
of  the  Judaizers.  The  early  Christians  in  Jerusalem  continued 
to  observe  the  Jewish  law.  They  continued  in  diligent  attend- 
ance upon  the  Temple  services.  They  observed  the  feasts,  they 
obeyed  the  regulations  about  food.  To  a  superficial  observer, 
they  were  simply  pious  Jews.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they 
were  not  simply  pious  Jews.  They  were  relying  for  salvation 
not  really  upon  their  observance  of  the  law,  but  solely  upon 
their  faith  in  the  crucified  and  risen  Christ.  Inwardly,  Christ- 
ianity was  from  the  very  beginning  no  mere  continuation  of 
Judaism,  but  a  new  religion.  Outwardly,  however,  the  early 
church  was  nothing  more  than  a  Jewish  sect.  And  the  Judai- 
zers failed  to  penetrate  beneath  the  outward  appearance.  Be- 
cause the  original  apostles  continued  to  observe  the  Jewish  law, 
the  Judaizers  supposed  that  legalism  was  of  the  essence  of  their 
religion.  The  Judaizers  appealed  to  the  outward  practice  of 
the  apostles;  Paul,  to  the  deepest  springs  of  their  religious  life. 
So  long  as  Christianity  was  preached  only  among  Jews,  there 
was  no  acute  conflict.  True  Christians  and  mere  Jewish  believ- 
ers in  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus  were  united  by  a  common  obser- 
vance of  the  Mosaic  law.     But  when  Christianity  began  to 


556  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

transcend  the  bounds  of  Judaism,  the  division  became  apparent. 
The  apostles,  true  disciples  of  Jesus,  attested  their  own  inward 
freedom  by  accepting  the  outward  freedom  of  the  Gentiles; 
the  Judaizers,  false  brethren  privily  brought  in,  insisted  upon 
the  observance  of  the  law  as  necessary  to  salvation. 

Paul,  then,  was  not  the  founder  of  universalistic  Christian- 
ity. In  principle,  Christianity  was  universalistic  from  the  very 
beginning.  In  principle,  the  first  Christians  in  Jerusalem  were 
entirely  free  from  the  Judaism  with  which  they  were  united 
outwardly  by  .observance  of  the  Temple  ritual.  If  Paul  was 
not  the  founder  of  universalistic  Christianity,  what  was  he? 
What  was  his  peculiar  service  to  the  Church?  It  was  not  the 
mere  geographical  extension  of  the  frontiers  of  the  Kingdom. 
That  achievement  he  shares  with  others.  Paul  was  perhaps  not 
even  the  first  to  preach  the  Gospel  systematically  to  Gentiles. 
That  honor  belongs  apparently  to  certain  unnamed  Jews  of 
Cyprus  and  Cyrene.  The  true  achievement  of  Paul  lies  in  an- 
other sphere — in  the  hidden  realm  of  thought.  When  Chris- 
tianity began  to  be  offered  directly  to  Gentiles  in  Antioch,  the 
principles  of  the  Gentile  mission  had  to  be  established  once  for 
all.  Conceivably,  of  course,  the  Gentile  mission  might  have 
got  along  without  principles.  The  leaders  of  the  church  at 
Antioch  might  have  pointed  simply  to  the  practical  necessities 
of  the  case.  Obviously,  the  Gentile  world,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
would  never  accept  circumcision,  and  would  never  submit  to 
the  Mosaic  law.  Consequently,  if  Christianity  was  ever  to  be 
anything  more  than  a  Jewish  sect,  the  requirements  of  the  law 
must  quietly  be  held  in  abeyance.  Conceivably,  the  leaders  of 
the  church  at  Antioch  might  have  reasoned  thus;  conceivably 
they  might  have  been  "  practical  Christian  workers  "  in  the 
modern  sense.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  leader  of  the 
church  at  Antioch  was  the  Apostle  Paul.  Paul  was  not  a  man 
to  sacrifice  principle  to  practical  necessity. 

What  was  standing  in  the  way  of  the  Gentile  mission  was  no 
mere  Jewish  racial  prejudice,  but  a  genuine  religious  principle. 
Jewish  particularism  was  part  of  the  very  essence  of  the  Jews' 
religion.  The  idea  of  the  covenant  between  God  and  his  chosen 
people  was  fundamental  in  all  periods  of  Judaism.  To  have 
offered  the  Gospel  to  uncircumcised  Gentiles  simply  because 


I 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  557 

that  was  demanded  by  the  practical  necessities  of  the  case, 
would  have  meant  to  a  Jew  nothing  less  than  disobedience  to 
the  revealed  will  of  God.  It  would  have  been  an  irreparable 
injury  to  the  religious  conscience.  Particularism  was  not  a 
prejudice,  but  a  religious  principle.  Therefore  it  could  be  over- 
come only  by  a  higher  principle.  Its  abrogation  needed  to  be 
demonstrated,  not  merely  assumed.  And  that  was  the  work  of 
Paul. 

The  original  apostles,  through  their  intercourse  with  Jesus 
upon  earth,  and  their  experience  of  the  risen  Lord,  had  in  prin- 
ciple transcended  Jewish  particularism.  Inwardly  they  were 
free  from  the  law.  But  they  did  not  know  that  they  were  free. 
Certainly  they  did  not  know  why  they  were  free.  Such  free- 
dom could  not  be  permanent.  It  sufficed  for  the  Jewish 
Church,  so  long  as  the  issue  was  not  clearly  drawn.  But  it  was 
open  to  argumentative  attack.  It  could  never  have  conquered 
the  world.  Christian  freedom  was  held  by  but  a  precarious 
tenure,  until  its  underlying  principles  were  established.  Christ- 
ianity could  not  exist  without  theology.  And  the  first  great 
Christian  theologian  was  Paul. 

In  championing  Gentile  freedom,  then,  in  emphasizing  the 
doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith  alone,  Paul  was  not  an  innovator. 
He  was  merely  making  explicit  what  had  been  implicit  before. 
He  was  in  fundamental  harmony  with  the  original  apostles. 
And  if  he  was  in  harmony  with  the  most  intimate  disciples  of 
Jesus,  the  presumption  is  that  he  was  in  harmony  with  Jesus 
himself. 

If  the  harmony  between  Paul  and  the  original  apostles  was 
preserved  by  Paul's  conception  of  Christian  freedom,  it  was 
preserved  even  more  clearly  by  his  view  of  the  person  of 
Christ.  Just  where  modern  radicalism  is  most  confident  that 
Paul  was  an  innovator,  Paul's  contemporaries  were  most  confi- 
dent of  his  faithfulness  to  tradition.  Even  the  Judaizers  had 
no  quarrel  with  Paul's  conception  of  Christ  as  a  heavenly  be- 
ing. In  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  where  Paul  insists  that 
he  received  his  apostleship  not  from  men  but  directly  from 
Christ,  he  does  so  in  sharp  opposition  to  the  Judaizers.  Paul 
says,  "  not  by  man,  but  by  Christ " ;  the  Judaizers  said,  "  not 
by  Christ  but  by  man  ".    But  if  so,  then  the  Judaizers,  no  less 


558  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

than  Paul,  distinguished  Christ  sharply  from  men,  and  placed 
him  clearly  on  the  side  of  God.  If  Paul  can  prove  that  he 
received  his  apostleship  directly  from  Christ,  then  he  has  al- 
ready proved  that  he  received  it  directly  from  God.  Appar- 
ently, it  never  occurred  to  him  that  his  opponents  might  accept 
the  former  proposition  and  deny  the  latter.  For  the  Judaizers 
as  well  as  for  Paul,  God  and  Christ  belong  together.  In  2  Cor. 
xi.  4,  it  is  true,  Paul  hints  that  his  opponents  are  preaching 
another  Jesus.  If  that  passage  stood  alone,  it  might  mean  that 
the  Judaizers  differed  from  Paul  in  their  conception  of  the 
person  of  Christ..  But  if  there  had  beeft  such  a  difference,  it 
would  surely  have  appeared  more  clearly  in  the  rest  of  the 
Corinthian  epistles.  If  the  Judaizers  had  taught  that  Jesus 
was  a  mere  man,  son  of  David  and  nothing  else,  surely 
Paul  would  have  taken  occasion  to  contradict  them.  So  dan- 
gerous an  error — an  error  so  completely  subversive  of  Paul's 
deepest  convictions — could  not  possibly  have  been  left  un- 
refuted.  The  meaning  of  the  passage  is  quite  different.  It 
was  the  Judaizers  themselves,  and  not  Paul,  who  said  that 
their  Jesus  was  another  Jesus.  "  Paul  ",  they  said  to  the 
Corinthians,  "  has  not  revealed  the  Gospel  to  you  in  its  ful- 
ness (2  Cor.  iv.  3,  xi.  5).  Paul  has  had  no  close  contact 
either  with  Jesus  himself,  or  with  the  immediate  disciples 
of  Jesus.  Paul  has  preached  but  an  imperfect  gospel.  We,  on 
the  other  hand,  can  offer  you  the  true  Jesus,  the  true  Spirit,  and 
the  true  gospel.  Do  not  listen  to  Paul.  We  alone  can  give  you 
fully  authentic  information.  "  In  reality,  however,  the  Judai- 
zers had  nothing  new  to  offer.  Paul  had  been  no  whit  behind 
"  the  preeminent  apostles  ".  He  had  made  the  full  gospel  plain 
and  open  before  them  (2  Cor.  xi.  5,  6).  If  Paul's  gospel  was 
hidden,  it  was  hidden  only  from  those  who  had  been  blinded  by 
the  god  of  this  world  (2  Cor.  iv.  4).  The  "  other  Jesus  "  of 
the  Judaizers  existed  only  in  their  own  inordinate  claims. 
They  preached  the  same  Jesus  as  did  Paul' — only  their  preach- 
ing was  marred  by  quarrelsomeness  and  pride.  They  preached 
the  same  Jesus;  but  they  had  not  themselves  come  into  vital 
communion  with  him.    In  that  they  differed  from  Paul. 

It  is  not  until  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  that  Paul  is  com- 
pelled to  defend  his  conception  of  the  person  of  Christ.    And 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  559 

there  he  defends  it  not  against  a  conservative,  naturalistic  view 
of  Jesus  as  a  merely  human  Messiah,  but  against  Gnostic  specu- 
lation. With  regard  to  the  person  of  Christ,  Paul  appears 
everywhere  in  perfect  harmony  with  all  Palestinian  Christians. 
In  the  whole  New  Testament  there  is  not  a  trace  of  a  conflict. 
That  is  a  fact  of  tremendous  significance.  For  Paul's  concep- 
tion of  the  supernatural  Christ  was  formed  not  later  than  five 
years  after  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus.  There  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  it  was  formed  at  the  conversion.  With  regard  to 
this  matter,  there  is  no  evidence  of  a  development  in  Paul's 
thinking.  One  passage,  2  Cor.  v.  16,  has  occasionaly  been  re- 
garded as  such  evidence.  But  only  by  palpable  disregard  of  the 
context.  When  Paul  says,  "  Even  if  we  have  known  Christ 
according  to  the  flesh,  yet  now  we  know  him  so  no  longer  ",  he 
cannot  possibly  mean  that  for  a  time  after  his  conversion  he 
regarded  Christ  simply  as  a  human,  Jewish  Messiah.  For  the 
point  of  the  whole  passage  is  the  revolutionary  change  wrought 
in  every  Christian's  life  by  the  death  of  Christ.  It  is  clearly 
the  appropriation  of  that  death — that  is,  conversion — and  not 
some  subsequent  development  of  the  Christian  life  which  brings 
the  transition  from  the  knowledge  of  Christ  after  the  flesh 
(whatever  that  may  be)  to  the  higher  knowledge  of  which 
Paul  is  now  in  possession.  The  revelation  of  God's  Son  (Gal. 
i.  16)  on  the  road  to  Damascus  clearly  gave  to  Paul  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  his  Christology.  What  is  more,  that  Christo- 
logy  must  have  formed  from  the  very  beginning  the  essence  of 
his  preaching.  The  *'  Jesus  "  whom  he  preached  in  the  Damas- 
can  synagogues  was  also  Christ — his  Christ.  That  he  preached 
in  Damascus  is  directly  attested  only  by  the  book  of  Acts,  but, 
as  has  been  observed  by  some  who  entertain  rather  a  low  esti- 
mate of  Acts,  it  is  implied  in  2  Cor.  xi.  32,  33.  What  could 
have  caused  the  persecution  of  Paul  except  Christian  activity 
on  his  part?  If  the  book  of  Acts  is  correct,  Paul  preached  also 
in  Jerusalem  only  three  years  after  his  conversion.  Yet  the 
churches  of  Judea  glorified  God  in  him.  If  there  was  opposi- 
tion to  his  heavenly  Christ,  such  opposition  has  left  no  trace. 
Yet  Paul  had  been  in  direct  consultation  with  Peter.  There  is 
every  reason  to  believe,  therefore,  that  from  the  very  begin- 
ning, the  exalted  Christology  of  Paul  was  accepted  by  the 


56o  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

Jerusalem  Church.  The  heavenly  Christ  of  Paul  was  also  the 
Christ  of  those  who  had  walked  and  talked  with  Jesus  of 
Nazareth. 

By  his  contemporaries,  then,  Paul  was  regarded  not  as  the 
founder  of  a  new  religion,  but  as  a  disciple  of  Jesus.  That  testi- 
mony may  be  overthrown  by  contrary  evidence.  But  there  is 
a  strong  presumption  that  it  is  correct.  For  among  those  who 
passed  judgment  upon  Paul  were  included  the  most  intimate 
friends  and  disciples  of  Jesus.  Their  estimate  of  Paul's  rela- 
tionship to  Jesus  can  be  rejected  only  under  the  compulsion  of 
positive  evidence..  Those  who  knew  Jesus  best  accepted  Paul 
as  a  disciple  of  Jesus  like  themselves. 

Thus,  by  his  contemporaries,  Paul  was  not  regarded  as  an 
innovator  with  respect  to  Jesus.  Did  he  regard  himself  as 
such? 

Put  in  this  form,  the  question  admits  of  but  one  answer.  "  It 
is  no  longer  I  that  live  ",  says  Paul,  "  but  Christ  that  liveth  in 
me.  "  Christ,  for  Paul,  was  absolute  Lord  and  Master.  But 
this  "  Christ "  whom  Paul  served  was  identified  by  Paul  with 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Of  that  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt. 
Moreover,  even  in  his  estate  of  humiliation,  Christ  was  re- 
garded by  Paul  as  Lord.  It  was  **  the  Lord  of  glory  "  ( i  Cor. 
ii.  8)  who  was  crucified.  The  right  of  the  earthly  Jesus  to 
issue  commands  was  for  Paul  a  matter  of  course.  That  is 
proved  beyond  question  even  by  the  few  direct  references  which 
Paul  makes  to  words  of  Jesus.  So  much  is  almost  universally 
admitted.  That  Paul  regarded  himself  as  a  disciple  of  Jesus 
can  be  denied  by  no  one.  The  difference  of  opinion  appears 
when  the  question  is  formulated  in  somewhat  broader  terms. 
Do  the  Pauline  Epistles  themselves,  even  apart  from  a  com- 
parison with  the  words  of  Jesus,  furnish  evidence  that  Paul 
was  not,  as  he  supposed,  a  disciple  of  Jesus,  but  the  founder  of 
a  new  religion  ? 

In  favor  of  the  affirmative,  two  considerations  have  been  ad- 
duced. 

In  the  first  place,  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  Paul  himself 
insists  upon  his  independence  of  tradition.  He  received  his 
gospel  directly  from  Christ,  not  through  any  human  agency. 
Even  after  he  had  received  his  gospel,  he  avoided  all  contact 


JESUS  AND   PAUL  561 

with  those  who  had  been  apostles  before  him.  He  conferred 
not  with  flesh  and  blood.  Paul  received  his  gospel,  then,  by- 
revelation  from  the  risen  Christ,  not  by  tradition  from  the 
earthly  Jesus.  But  the  earthly  Jesus  was  the  historical  Jesus. 
In  exalting  his  direct  commission  from  the  heavenly  Christ, 
Paul  has  himself  betrayed  the  slenderness  of  his  connection 
with  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

In  the  second  place,  the  same  low  estimate  of  historical  tra- 
dition appears  throughout  the  epistles,  in  the  paucity  of  refer- 
ences to  the  words  and  deeds  of  Jesus.  Apparently  Paul  is 
interested  almost  exclusively  in  the  birth  and  death  and  resur- 
rection. He  is  interested  in  the  birth  as  the  incarnation  of  a 
heavenly  being,  come  for  the  salvation  of  men;  and  in  the 
death  and  resurrection  as  the  great  cosmic  events  by  which 
salvation  was  obtained.  But  for  the  details  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  he  displays  but  little  interest.  His  mind  and  fancy  are 
dominated  by  a  vague,  mysterious,  cosmic  personification,  not 
by  a  definite  historical  person — by  the  heavenly  Christ,  not  by 
Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

The  latter  of  these  two  arguments  can  be  established  only  by 
exaggeration  and  by  misinterpretation — ^by  exaggeration  of 
the  paucity  of  references  in  Paul  to  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  by 
misinterpretation  of  the  paucity  that  really  exists.  In  the  first 
place,  Paul  displays  far  greater  knowledge  than  is  sometimes 
supposed,  and  in  the  second  place,  he  possesses  far  greater 
knowledge  than  he  displays.  The  testimony  of  Paul  to  Jesus 
has  been  examined  many  times — it  will  not  be  necessary  to 
traverse  the  ground  again.  The  assertion  that  the  details  of  the 
life  of  Jesus  were  of  little  value  for  Paul  is  contradicted  in  no 
uncertain  terms  by  such  passages  as  2  Cor.  x.  i  and  Rom.  xv. 
3.  When  Paul  urges  as  an  example  to  his  readers  the  meek- 
ness and  gentleness  of  Christ,  or  his  faithfulness  in  bearing  re- 
proaches in  the  service  of  God,  he  is  evidently  thinking  not  pri- 
marily of  the  gracious  acts  of  the  incarnation  and  passion,  as  in 
Phil.  ii.  5  ff.,  and  2  Cor.  viii.  9,  but  of  the  character  of  Jesus  as 
it  was  exhibited  in  his  daily  life  on  earth.  Such  expressions  as 
these  attest  not  merely  knowledge  of  Jesus  but  also  warm  ap- 
preciation of  his  character.  The  imitation  of  Jesus  ( i  Cor.  xi. 
i)  had  its  due  place  in  the  ethical  life  of  Paul.     Direct  com- 


562  JESUS   AND  PAUL 

mands  of  Jesus  are  occasionally  quoted,  and  Paul  is  fully  con- 
scious of  the  significance  of  such  commands  (i  Cor.  vii.  10,  12, 
25).  In  I  Cor.  xi.  23  ff.,  he  quotes  in  full  the  words  of  Jesus 
instituting  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  incidentally  shows  that  he  is 
acquainted  with  the  exact  circumstances  under  which  the  words 
were  spoken  ("  the  night  in  which  he  was  betrayed  "). 

The  incidental  character  of  Paul's  references  to  the  life  of 
Jesus  itself  suggests  that  he  knew  far  more  than  he  chooses  to 
tell.  The  account  of  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  for 
example,  would  never  have  found  a  place  in  the  epistles  except 
for  certain  abuses  which  had  sprung  up  fn  Corinth.  Yet  Paul 
says  that  he  had  already  "  delivered  over  "  that  account  to  the 
Corinthians.  It  had  formed  part  of  his  elementary  preaching. 
And  it  displays  intimate  knowledge  of  detail.  That  one  ex- 
ample is  sufficient  to  prove  not  only  that  Paul  knew  more  than 
he  tells  in  the  epistles,  but  also  that  what  is  omitted  from  the 
epistles  formed  part  of  the  essential  elements  of  his  preaching. 
It  is  omitted  not  because  it  is  unimportant,  but  on  the  contrary 
because  it  is  fundamental.  Instruction  about  it  had  to  be  given 
at  the  very  beginning,  and  did  not  often  have  to  be  repeated. 
The  hint  supplied  by  such  passages  as  the  account  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  in  i  Cor.  xi.  23  ff.  is  only  supplementary  to  weighty  a 
priori  considerations.  A  missionary  preaching  that  included 
no  concrete  account  of  the  life  of  Jesus  would  have  been  pre- 
posterous. The  claim  that  a  crucified  Jew  was  to  be  obeyed  as 
Lord  and  trusted  as  Saviour  must  surely  have  provoked  the 
question  as  to  what  manner  of  man  this  was.  It  is  true  that 
the  gods  of  other  religions  needed  to  be  described  only  in  gen- 
eral terms.  But  Christianity  had  dispensed  with  the  advantages 
of  such  vagueness.  It  had  identified  its  God  with  a  Jew  who 
had  lived  but  a  few  years  before.  Surely  the  tremendous  pre- 
judice against  accepting  a  crucified  criminal  as  Lord  and  Master 
could  be  overcome  only  by  an  account  of  the  wonderful  charac- 
ter of  Jesus.  The  only  other  resource  is  an  extreme  super- 
naturalism.  If  the  concrete  figure  of  the  crucified  one  had  no 
part  in  winning  the  hearts  of  men,  then  the  work  must  have 
been  accomplished  by  a  magical  exercise  of  divine  power — 
working  out  of  all  connection  with  the  mind  and  heart.  That 
is  not  the  supematuralism  of  Paul.    When  Paul  writes  to  the 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  563 

Galatians  that  Jesus  Christ  crucified  was  placarded  before 
their  eyes,  he  refers  to  something  more  than  a  dogmatic  ex- 
position of  the  atonement.  The  picture  of  the  crucified  one 
owed  part  of  its  compelHng  power  to  the  conviction  that  the 
death  there  portrayed  was  the  supreme  act  of  a  life  of  love. 

It  is  already  pretty  clear  that  the  first  chapter  of  Galatians 
cannot  mean  that  Paul  had  a  contempt  for  Christian  tradition. 
When  Paul  says  that  he  received  his  gospel  by  direct  revelation 
from  Jesus  Christ,  he  cannot  mean  that  he  excluded  from  his 
preaching  what  he  had  received  by  ordinary  word  of  mouth 
from  the  eye-witnesses  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  He  cannot  mean 
even  that  his  proof  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  was  based 
solely  upon  his  own  testimony.  That  inference,  at  least,  would 
be  very  natural  if  Gal.  i  stood  alone.  But  it  is  refuted  in  no 
uncertain  terms  by  i  Cor.  xv.  3-7.  In  this  passage  the  ap- 
pearances of  the  risen  Christ  to  persons  other  than  Paul  are 
reviewed  in  an  extended  list,  and  Paul  distinctly  says  that  this 
formed  a  part  of  his  first  preaching  in  Corinth.  So  not  even 
the  fact  of  the  resurrection  itself  was  supported  solely  by  the 
testimony  of  Paul.  On  the  contrary,  Paul  was  diligent  in  in- 
vestigating the  testimony  of  others. 

The  first  chapter  of  Galatians,  therefore,  bears  a  very  differ- 
ent aspect  when  it  is  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  other 
Pauline  epistles.  Paul  does  not  mean  that  all  his  information 
about  Jesus  came  from  the  risen  Christ.  In  all  probability, 
Paul  knew  the  essential  facts  in  the  life  of  Jesus  even  before  he 
became  a  Christian.  Since  he  was  a  persecutor  of  the  Church, 
he  must  have  had  at  least  general  information  about  its  foun- 
der. The  story  of  the  life  and  death  of  the  Galilean  prophet 
must  have  been  matter  of  common  knowledge  in  Palestine. 
And  after  the  conversion,  Paul  added  to  his  knowledge.  It 
is  inconceivable  that  during  the  brief  intercourse  with  Peter, 
for  example,  the  subject  of  the  words  and  deeds  of  Jesus 
was  studiously  avoided.  Such  an  unnatural  supposition  is  by 
no  means  required  by  the  actual  phenomena  of  the  epistles. 
That  has  been  demonstrated  above.  The  true  reason  why 
Paul  does  not  mention  his  knowledge  of  the  life  of  Jesus  as 
part  of  the  basis  of  his  faith,  is  that  for  him  such  factual 
||k   knowledge  was  a  matter  of  course.    For  us  it  is  not  a  matter 

I 


564  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

of  course,  because  many  centuries  stand  between  us  and  the 
events.  For  us,  painful  investigation  of  sources  is  necessary 
in  order  that  we  may  arrive  even  at  the  bare  facts.  Indeed, 
it  is  just  the  facts  that  need  to  be  estabHshed  in  the  face  of 
the  sharpest  criticism.  But  for  Paul,  the  facts  were  matter  of 
common  knowledge;  it  was  the  interpretation  of  the  facts 
which  was  in  dispute.  Paul  was  living  in  Jerusalem  only  a 
very  few  years  at  the  latest  after  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus.  The 
prophet  of  Nazareth  had  certainly  created  considerable  stir  in 
Jerusalem  as  well  as  in  Galilee.  These  things  were  not  done 
in  a  corner.  The  general  outlines  of  tTie  life  of  Jesus  were 
known  to  friend  and  foe  alike.  Even  indifference  could 
hardly  have  brought  forget  fulness.  But  Paul  was  not  indiffer- 
ent. Before  his  conversion,  as  well  as  after  it,  he  was  in- 
terested in  Jesus.  That  was  what  made  him  the  most  relent- 
less of  the  persecutors. 

The  bare  facts  of  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus  did  not,  therefore, 
constitute  in  Paul's  mind  a  "  gospel  ".  Everyone  knew  the 
facts — the  Pharisees  as  well  as  the  disciples.  The  facts  could 
be  obtained  through  a  thousand  channels.  Paul  did  not  reflect 
as  to  where  he  got  them.  Before  the  conversion,  he  heard  the 
reports  of  the  opponents  of  Jesus,  and  the  common  gossip  of 
the  crowds.  After  the  conversion,  there  were  many  eye-wit- 
nesses who  could  be  questioned — perhaps  in  Damascus  and 
even  in  Arabia  as  well  as  in  Jerusalem.  It  never  occurred  to 
Paul  to  regard  himself  as  a  disciple  of  the  men  who  merely  re- 
ported the  facts,  any  more  than  the  modern  man  feels  a  deep 
gratitude  to  the  newspaper  in  which  he  reads  useful  informa- 
tion. If  that  particular  paper  had  not  printed  the  news,  others 
would  have  done  so.  The  sources  of  information  are  so  numer- 
ous that  no  one  of  them  can  be  regarded  as  of  supreme  im- 
portance. For  us,  the  sources  of  information  about  the  life 
of  Jesus  are  limited.  Hence  our  veneration  for  the  Gospels. 
But  Paul  was  a  contempnDrary  of  Jesus ;  the  sources  of  his  in- 
formation about  Jesus  were  so  numerous  that  they  could  not 
be  counted. 

Thus,  when  Paul  says  that  he  received  his  gospel  from  the 
risen  Christ,  he  does  not  mean  that  the  risen  Christ  revealed 
to  him  the  facts  of  the  life  of  Jesus.    He  had  known  the  facts 


I 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  565 

before—- only  they  had  filled  him  with  hatred.  What  he  re- 
ceived at  his  conversion  was  a  new  interpretation  of  the  facts. 
Instead  of  continuing  to  persecute  the  disciples  of  Jesus,  he 
accepted  Jesus  as  living  Lord  and  Master.  Conceivably,  the 
change  might  have  been  wrought  through  the  preaching  of  the 
disciples;  Paul  might  have  received  his  gospel  through  the 
ministrations  of  Peter.  But  such  was  not  the  Lord's  will. 
Suddenly,  on  the  road  to  Damascus,  Jesus  called  him.  Paul 
had  heard,  perhaps,  of  the  call  of  the  first  disciples;  he  had 
heard  of  those  who  left  home  and  kindred  to  follow  the  new 
teacher.  He  had  heard  only  to  condemn.  But  now  it  was  his 
turn.  Jesus  called,  and  he  obeyed.  Jesus,  whom  he  knew  only 
too  well — destroyer  of  the  Temple,  accursed  by  the  law,  cruci- 
fied, dead  and  buried — was  living  Lord.  Jesus  called  him. — 
called  him  not  merely  to  revering  imitation  of  the  holy  martyr, 
not  merely  to  a  new  estimate  of  events  that  were  past,  but  to 
present,  living  communion  with  himself.  Jesus  himself,  in 
very  presence,  called  him  into  communion,  and  into  glorious 
service.  That,  and  that  only,  is  what  Paul  means  when  he  says 
that  he  received  his  gospel  not  from  man  but  by  revelation  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

Neither  by  Paul  himself,  therefore,  nor  by  the  original  apos- 
tles was  Paul  regarded  as  an  innovator  with  reference  to 
Jesus.  On  the  contrary  he  regarded  himself  and  was  regarded 
by  others  as  a  true  disciple.  The  presumption  is  that  that 
opinion  was  correct.  For  both  Paul  himself,  and  the  early 
Christians  with  whom  he  came  into  contact  were  contempor- 
aries of  Jesus,  and  had  every  opportunity  to  know  him.  If 
Paul  had  detected  any  fundamental  divergence  between  his 
own  teaching  and  that  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  then  he  could  not 
have  remained  Jesus'  disciple.  Unless,  indeed,  the  conversion 
was  supernatural.  But  the  conversion  was  not  supernatural  if 
it  left  Paul  in  disharmony  with  Jesus.  For  it  purported  to 
be  wrought  by  Jesus  himself.  If  supernatural,  the  conversion 
could  not  have  left  Paul  in  disharmony  with  the  historical 
Jesus,  because  it  was  wrought  by  an  appearance  of  Jesus; 
if  not  supernatural,  it  would  have  been  insufficient  to  make 
Paul  regard  himself  as  a  disciple  of  one  with  whom  he  did 
not  agree.     That  the  original  apostles  had  every  opportunity 


566  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

for  knowing  the  historical  Jesus  requires  no  proof.    Yet  un- 
doubtedly they  accepted  Paul  as  a  disciple. 

The  presumption  thus  established  in  favor  of  regarding  Paul 
as  a  true  disciple  of  Jesus  could  be  overthrown  only  by  posi- 
tive divergence,  established  by  an  actual  comparison  of  Jesus 
with  Paul.  At  the  very  outset  of  such  comparison,  a  serious 
difficulty  is  encountered.  How  is  Jesus  to  be  investigated? 
Paul  we  know,  but  what  is  the  truth  about  Jesus?  It  will 
not  do,  it  is  said,  to  accept  the  Gospel  picture  in  its  entirety: 
For  the  Gospel?  were  written  after  Paul,  and  have  been 
affected  by  Pauline  thinking.  To  a  certain  extent,  therefore, 
it  is  no  longer  the  historical  Jesus  which  the  Gospels  describe, 
but  the  Pauline  Christ.  To  compare  Paul  with  the  Gospels, 
therefore,  is  to  compare  not  Paul  with  Jesus,  but  Paul  with 
Paul.  Naturally  the  comparison  establishes  coincidence,  not 
divergence ;  but  the  result  is  altogether  without  value. 

This  objection  was  applied  first  of  all  to  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
The  Fourth  Gospel  was  written  undoubtedly  many  years  after 
the  Pauline  Epistles.  And  undoubtedly  it  exhibits  a  remark- 
able harmony  with  Pauline  thinking.  The  Pauline  Christ  is 
here  made  to  appear  even  in  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus.  In 
this  respect,  it  is  said,  the  Gospel  is  more  Pauline  than  Paul 
himself.  Paul  had  done  justice  to  the  human  life  of  Jesus  by 
distinguishing  sharply  between  the  humiliation  and  the  exalta- 
tion of  Christ.  Jesus  had  become  Son  of  God  in  power  only  at 
the  resurrection.  In  the  Fourth  Gospel,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
heavenly  Christ  appears  in  all  his  glory  even  on  earth.  Fur- 
thermore, the  new  birth  of  Jno.  iii  is  identical  with  the 
Pauline  conception  of  the  new  life  which  the  Christian  has  by 
sharing  in  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Christ.  Even  the 
Pauline  doctrine  of  the  sacrificial  death  of  Christ,  though  not 
prominent  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  appears  in  such  passages  as 
Jno.  i.  29  and  iii.  14,  15. 

The  objection  could  be  overcome  only  by  an  examination 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  which  would  far  transcend  the  limits  of 
the  present  discussion.  The  Fourth  Gospel  will  therefore  here 
be  left  out  of  account.  It  should  be  remarked,  however,  in 
passing,  that  dependence  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  upon  Paul  has 
by  no  means  been  proved.    A  far-reaching  similarity  in  ideas 


JESUS  AND   PAUL  567 

may  freely  be  admitted.  But  in  order  to  prove  dependence, 
it  is  necessary  to  establish  similarity  not  only  of  ideas,  but 
also  of  expression.  And  that  is  conspicuously  absent.  Even 
where  the  underlying  ideas  are  most  clearly  identical,  the 
terminology  is  strikingly  different — and  not  only  the  bare 
terminology  but  also  the  point  of  view.  The  entire  atmos- 
phere and  spirit  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  quite  distinct  from 
that  of  the  Pauline  Epistles.  That  is  sufficient  to  disprove  the 
hypothesis  of  dependence  of  the  Gospel  upon  Paul.  The  un- 
derlying similarity  of  thought,  when  taken  in  connection  with 
the  total  dissimilarity  of  expression,  can  be  explained  only  by 
dependence  upon  a  common  source.  And  that  source  can 
hardly  be  anything  but  Jesus  Christ. 

Provisionally,  however,  the  Fourth  Gospel  will  be  left  out  of 
account.  That  can  be  done  with  the  greater  safety,  because  it 
is  now  universally  agreed  that  the  contrast  between  the  Fourth 
Gospel  and  the  Synoptics  is  not  an  absolute  one.  The  day  is 
past  when  the  divine  Christ  of  the  Gospel  of  John  could  be 
confronted  with  a  human  Christ  of  Mark.  Historical  students 
of  all  shades  of  opinion  have  now  come  to  see  that  Mark  as 
well  as  John  (though,  it  is  believed,  in  a  lesser  degree)  pre- 
sents an  exalted  Christology.  The  charge  of  Pauline  influence, 
therefore,  has  been  brought  not  only  against  John,  but  also 
against  the  earlier  Gospels.  Hence,  it  is  maintained  that  if 
Paul  be  compared  even  with  the  Jesus  of  the  Synoptics,  he  is 
being  compared  not  with  the  historical  Jesus,  but  with  a  Paul- 
inized  Jesus.     Obviously  such  comparison  can  prove  nothing. 

If  the  Synoptic  Gospels  were  influenced  by  Paul,  then  there 
is  extant  not  a  single  document  which  preserves  a  pre-Pauline 
conception  of  Christ.  That  is  a  very  remarkable  state  of 
affairs.  The  original  disciples  of  Jesus,  those  who  had  been 
intimate  with  him  on  earth,  those  from  whom  the  most  authen- 
tic information  might  have  been  expected,  have  allowed  their 
account  of  the  life  of  Jesus  to  be  altered  through  the  influence 
of  one  who  could  speak  only  from  hearsay.  Such  alteration 
would  certainly  fall  within  the  lifetime  of  many  of  the  eye- 
witnesses. For  the  Gospel  of  Mark  is  generally  admitted  to 
have  been  written  before  70  A.D.  It  is  conceivable  that  the 
Pauline  conception  might  thus  have  gained  the  ascendancy 


568  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

over  the  primitive  conception.  But  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that 
it  could  have  done  so  without  a  struggle,  and  of  struggle  there 
is  not  a  trace.  In  the  supposed  Pauline  passages  in  the 
Synoptic  Gospels,  the  writers  are  quite  unaware  that  one  con- 
ception is  being  replaced  by  another.  And  the  Pauline  Epistles 
themselves,  as  has  already  been  observed,  presuppose  a  sub- 
stantial agreement  between  Paul  and  the  Jerusalem  Church 
with  regard  to  the  person  of  Christ.  This  remarkable  ab- 
sence of  struggle  between  the  Pauline  conception  and  the  primi- 
tive conception  can  be  explained  only  if  the  two  were  essen- 
tially the  same.  Only  so  could  the  Pauline  conception  have 
been  accepted  by  the  Jerusalem  Church,  and  permitted  to  domi- 
nate subsequent  Christianity.  This  conclusion  is  supported  by 
the  positive  evidence,  which  has  recently  been  urged,  for  ex- 
ample by  Harnack,  for  a  pre-Pauline  dating  of  the  Synoptic 
Gospels — that  is,  for  dating  them  at  a  time  when  the  Pauline 
Epistles,  even  if  some  of  them  had  already  been  written,  could 
not  have  been  collected,  and  could  not  have  begun  to  dominate 
the  thinking  of  the  Church  at  large.  The  affinity  between  the 
Christology  of  Paul  and  the  Jesus  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels 
does  not  prove  the  dependence  of  the  Gospels  upon  Paul.  For 
the  Christology  of  Paul  was  also,  in  essentials,  the  Christology 
of  the  primitive  Christian  community  in  Jerusalem. 

The  transition  from  the  human  Jesus  to  the  divine  Christ 
must  be  placed  therefore  not  between  the  primitive  church  and 
Paul,  but  between  Jesus  and  the  primitive  church.  A  man, 
Jesus,  came  to  be  regarded  as  a  divine  being,  not  by  later 
generations,  who  could  have  been  deceived  by  the  nimbus  of 
distance  and  mystery,  but  almost  immediately  after  his  death, 
by  his  intimate  friends,  by  men  who  had  seen  him  subject  to  all 
the  petty  limitations  of  daily  life.  Even  if  Paul  were  the  first 
witness  to  the  deification  of  Jesus,  the  process  would  still  be 
preternaturally  rapid.  Jesus  would  still  be  regarded  as  a 
divine  being  by  a  contemporary  of  his  intimate  friends — and 
each  deification  would  be  no  mere  official  form  of  flattery,  like! 
the  apotheosis  of  the  Roman  emperors,  but  would  be  the  ex- 
pression of  serious  conviction.  The  process  by  which  the 
man  Jesus  was  raised  to  divine  dignity  within  a  few  years  of 
his  death  would  be  absolutely  unique.     That  has  been  recog- 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  569 

nized  even  by  men  of  the  most  thorough-going  naturalistic 
principles.  The  late  H.  J.  Holtzmann,^  who  may  be  regarded 
as  the  typical  exponent  of  modern  New  Testament  criticism, 
admitted  that  for  the  rapid  apotheosis  of  Jesus,  as  it  appears 
in  the  thinking  of  Paul,  he  was  unable  to  cite  any  parallel  in 
the  religious  history  of  the  race.  In  order  to  explain  the 
origin  of  the  Pauline  Christology,  Bruckner  and  Wrede  have 
recourse  to  the  Jewish  Apocalypses.  The  Christology  of  Paul 
was  formed,  it  is  said,  before  his  conversion.  He  needed  only 
to  identify  the  heavenly,  preexistent  Christ  of  his  Jewish  be- 
lief with  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  his  Christology  was  complete. 
But  that  explanation  does  not  help  matters.  Even  if  it  be  ac- 
cepted to  the  fullest  extent,  it  explains  only  details.  It  explains 
why,  if  Jesus  was  to  be  regarded  as  a  divine  being,  he  was  re- 
garded as  just  this  particular  kind  of  divine  being.  But  it 
does  not  explain  how  he  came  to  be  regarded  as  a  divine  being 
at  all.  And  that  is  what  really  requires  explanation.  One 
might  almost  as  well  say  that  the  deification  of  a  man  is  ex- 
plained if  only  it  be  shown  that  those  who  accomplished  such 
deification  already  had  a  conception  of  God.  The  apotheosis 
of  Jesus,  then,  is  remarkable,  even  if  it  was  due  to  Paul.  But 
it  becomes  yet  a  thousand  fold  more  remarkable  when  it  is 
seen  to  have  been  due  not  to  Paul,  but  to  the  intimate  friends 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Indeed,  the  process  is  so  remarkable 
that  the  question  arises  whether  there  is  not  something  wrong 
with  the  starting-point.  The  end  of  the  process  is  fixed.  It 
is  the  super-human  Christ  of  Paul  and  of  the  primitive  church. 
If,  therefore,  the  process  is  inconceivable  in  its  rapidity,  it  is 
the  starting-point  which  becomes  open  to  suspicion.  The  start- 
ing-point is  the  purely  human  Jesus.  A  suspicion  arises  that 
he  never  existed.  If  indeed  any  early  Christian  extant  docu- 
ment gave  a  clear,  consistent  account  of  a  Jesus  who  was 
nothing  more  than  a  man,  then  the  historian  might  be  forced 
to  regard  such  a  Jesus  as  the  starting-point  for  an  astonish- 

'In  Protestantische  Monatshefte,  iv  (1900),  pp.  465  ff.,  and  in  Christliche 
Welt,  xxiv  (1910),  column  153.  Holtzmann  is  careful  to  observe  that  it 
is  only  apparent  uniqueness  and  not  actual  uniqueness  that  he  admits. 
There  may  be  a  parallel,  but  it  has  not  come  under  his  observation.  In 
view  of  Holtzmann's  learning,  the  significance  of  the  admission  remains. 


570  JESUS   AND  PAUL 

ingly  rapid  apotheosis.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  no  such 
document  is  in  existence.  Even  those  writers  who  represent 
Jesus  most  clearly  as  a  man,  represent  him  as  something  more 
than  a  man,  and  are  quite  unconscious  of  a  conflict  between  the 
two  representations.  Indeed  the  two  representations  appear  as 
two  ways  of  regarding  one  and  the  same  person.  If,  therefore, 
the  purely  human  Jesus  is  to  be  reconstructed,  he  can  be  re- 
constructed only  by  a  critical  process.  That  critical  process,  in 
view  of  the  indissolubly  close  connection  in  which  divine  and 
human  appear  in  the  Synoptic  representation  of  Jesus,  becomes, 
to  say  the  least,  exceedingly  difficult.  And  after  criticism  has 
done  its  work,  after  the  purely  human  Jesus  has  been  in  some 
sort  disentangled  from  the  ornamentation  which  had  almost 
hopelessly  defaced  his  portrait,  the  critic  faces  another  prob- 
lem yet  more  baffling  than  the  first.  How  did  this  human 
Jesus  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  super-human  Jesus  even  by 
his  most  intimate  friends?  There  is  absolutely  nothing  to 
explain  the  transition  except  the  supposed  appearances  of  the 
risen  Lord.  The  disciples  had  been  familiar  with  a  Jesus  who 
placed  himself  on  the  side  of  man,  not  of  God,  who  offered 
himself  as  an  example  of  faith,  not  as  the  object  of  faith. 
And  yet,  after  his  shameful  death,  this  estimate  of  his  person 
suddenly  gave  place  to  a  vastly  higher  estimate.  That  is  bare 
supernaturalism.  It  is  supernaturalism  stripped  of  that  har- 
mony with  the  laws  of  the  human  mind  which  has  been  pre- 
served even  by  the  supernaturalism  of  the  Church.  In  its 
effort  to  remove  the  supernatural  from  the  life  of  Jesus,  mod- 
ern criticism  has  been  obliged  to  heap  up  a  double  portion  of 
the  supernatural  upon  the  Easter  experience  of  the  disciples. 
If  the  disciples  had  been  familiar  with  a  supernatural  Jesus — 
a  Jesus  who  forgave  sin  as  only  God  can,  a  Jesus  who  offered 
himself  not  as  an  example  of  faith  but  as  the  object  of  faith, 
a  Jesus  who  substantiated  these  his  lofty  claims  by  wonderful 
command  over  the  powers  of  nature — then  conceivably,  though 
not  probably,  the  impression  of  such  a  Jesus  might  have  been 
sufficient  to  produce  in  the  disciples,  in  a  purely  natural  way, 
the  experiences  which  they  interpreted  as  appearances  of  the 
risen  Lord.  But  by  eliminating  the  supernatural  in  the  life 
of  the  Jesus  whom  the  disciples  had  known,  modern  criticism 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  571 

has  closed  the  way  to  this  its  only  possible  psychological  ex- 
planation of  the  Easter  experience.  In  order  to  explain  the 
facts  of  primitive  Christianity,  the  supernatural  must  be  re- 
tained at  least  either  in  the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  or  else 
in  the  appearances  of  the  risen  Lord.  But  of  course  no  one 
will  stop  with  that  alternative.  If  the  supernatural  be  accep- 
ted in  either  place,  then  of  course  it  will  be  accepted  in  both 
places.  If  Jesus  was  really  a  supernatural  person,  then  his 
resurrection  and  appearance  to  his  disciples  was  only  what  was 
to  be  expected ;  if  the  experience  of  the  disciples  was  really  an 
appearance  of  Jesus,  then  of  course  even  in  his  earthly  life  he 
was  a  supernatural  person.  The  supernaturalism  of  the  Church 
is  a  reasonable  supernaturalism ;  the  supernaturalism  into  which 
modern  criticism  is  forced  in  its  effort  to  avoid  supernatural- 
ism, is  a  supernaturalism  unworthy  of  a  reasonable  God.  In 
■order  to  explain  the  exalted  Christology  of  the  primitive 
church,  either  the  appearance  of  the  risen  Christ  or  the  Easter 
experience  of  the  disciples  must  be  regarded  as  supernatural. 
But  if  either  was  supernatural  then  there  is  no  objection  against 
supposing  that  both  were. 

The  similarity  of  the  exalted  Christology  of  the  Synoptic 
Gospels  to  the  Christology  of  Paul  is  therefore  no  indication 
■of  dependence  upon  Paul.  For  the  Christology  of  Paul  was 
in  essence  the  Christology  of  the  primitive  church;  and  the 
Christology  of  the  primitive  church  must  have  found  its  justi- 
fication in  the  life  of  Jesus.  Furthermore,  comparison  of 
Pauline  thinking  with  the  teaching  of  Jesus  in  the  Synoptic 
Gospels  will  demonstrate  that  the  harmony  between  Jesus  and 
Paul  extends  even  to  those  elements  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
which  are  regarded  by  modern  criticism  as  most  character- 
istic of  him.  For  example,  the  fatherhood  of  God,  and  love 
as  the  fulfilling  of  the  law.  The  conception  of  God  as  father 
was  known,  it  is  true,  in  pre-Christian  Judaism.  But  Jesus 
brought  an  incalculable  enrichment  of  it.  And  that  same 
enrichment  appears  in  Paul  in  all  its  fulness.  In  the  earliest 
extant  epistle  (i  Thess.  i.  i)  and  throughout  all  the  epistles, 
the  fatherhood  of  God  appears  as  a  matter  of  course.  It 
requires  no  defence  or  elaboration.  It  is  one  of  the  common- 
places of  Christianity.    Yet  it  is  not  for  Paul  a  mere  matter 


572  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

of  tradition,  but  a  vital  element  in  his  religious  life.  It  has 
not,  through  familiarity,  lost  one  whit  of  its  freshness.  The 
cry,  **  Abba,  Father  ",  comes  from  the  very  depths  of  the 
heart.  Hardly  less  prominent  in  Paul  is  the  conception  of 
love  as  the  fulfilling  of  the  law.  *'  The  whole  law  is  fulfilled 
in  one  word,  even  in  this,  *  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself.'  "  "  And  if  I  bestow  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor, 
and  if  I  give  my  body  to  be  burned,  but  have  not  love,  it 
profiteth  me  nothing."  In  the  epistles,  it  is  true,  Paul  is 
speaking  usually  of  love  for  Christian  brethren.  But  simply 
because  of  the  needs  of  the  churches.  "The  closeness  of  the 
relationship  with  fellow-Christians  had  sometimes  increased 
rather  than  diminished  the  tendency  towards  strife  and  selfish- 
ness. The  epistles  are  addressed  not  to  missionaries,  but  to 
Christians  of  very  imperfect  mold,  who  needed  to  be  ad- 
monished to  exhibit  love  even  where  love  might  have  seemed 
most  natural  and  easy.  On  account  of  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances, therefore,  Paul  speaks  especially  of  love  for  fellow- 
Christians.  But  not  to  the  exclusion  of  love  for  all  men. 
Never  was  greater  injustice  done  than  when  Paul  is  accused  of 
narrowness  in  his  affections.  His  whole  life  is  the  refutation 
of  such  a  charge — his  life  of  tactful  adaptation  to  varying  con- 
ditions, of  restless  energy,  of  untold  peril  and  hardship.  What 
was  the  secret  of  such  a  life?  Love  of  Christ,  no  doubt.  But 
also  love  of  those  for  whom  Christ  died — whether  Jew  or 
Greek,  circumcision  or  uncircumcision,  barbarian,  Scythian, 
bond  or  free. 

The  fatherhood  of  God,  it  is  true,  does  not  mean  for  Paul 
that  God  is  pleased  with  all  men,  or  that  all  men  will  receive 
the  children's  blessing.  And  Christian  love  does  not  mean 
obliteration  of  the  dividing  line  between  the  Kingdom  and  the 
world.  But  these  limitations  appear  at  least  as  clearly  in 
Jesus  as  in  Paul.  The  dark  background  of  eternal  destruction, 
and  the  sharp  division  between  the  disciples  and  the  world  are 
described  by  Jesus  in  far  harsher  terms  than  Paul  ever  ven- 
tured to  employ.  It  was  Jesus  who  spoke  of  the  outer  darkness 
and  the  everlasting  fire,  of  the  sin  that  shall  not  be  forgiven 
either  in  this  world  or  in  that  which  is  to  come ;  it  was  Jesus 
who  said,  "If  any  man  cometh  unto  me,  and  hateth  not  his 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  573 

own  father,  and  mother,  and  wife,  and  children,  and  brethren 
and  sisters,  yea,  and  his  own  Hfe  also,  he  cannot  be  my  dis- 
ciple." 

These  examples  might  be  multiplied;  and  they  should  be 
supplemented  by  what  has  been  said  above  with  regard  to 
Paul's  appreciation  of  the  character  of  Jesus.  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth, as  he  is  depicted  for  us  in  the  Gospels,  was  for  Paul 
the  supreme  moral  ideal.  But  that  does  not  make  Paul  a 
disciple  of  Jesus.  Be  it  spoken  with  all  plainness.  Imitation 
of  Jesus,  important  as  it  was  in  the  life  of  Paul,  was  over- 
shadowed by  something  else.  All  that  has  been  said  about 
Paul's  interest  in  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus,  about  his  obedience 
to  Jesus'  commands,  about  his  reverence  for  Jesus'  character, 
cannot  disguise  the  fact  that  these  things  for  Paul  are  not 
supreme.  Knowledge  of  the  life  of  Jesus  is  not  for  Paul  an 
end  in  itself  but  a  means  to  an  end.  The  essence  of  Paul's 
religious  life  is  not  imitation  of  a  dead  prophet.  It  is  com- 
munion with  a  living  Lord.  In  making  the  risen  Christ,  not 
the  earthly  Jesus,  the  supreme  object  of  Paul's  thinking,  mod- 
ern radicalism  is  perfectly  correct.  Paul  cannot  be  vindicated 
as  a  disciple  of  Jesus  simply  by  correcting  exaggeration^ — 
simply  by  showing  that  the  influence  upon  him  of  the  teach- 
ing and  example  of  Jesus  was  somewhat  greater  than  has  been 
supposed.  The  true  relationships  of  a  man  are  to  be  de- 
termined not  by  the  periphery  of  his  life,  but  by  what  is  cen- 
tral— central  both  in  his  own  estimation  and  in  his  influence 
upon  history.  But  the  centre  and  core  of  Paulinism  is  not 
imitation  of  the  earthly  Jesus,  but  communion  with  the  risen 
Christ.  It  was  that  which  Paul  himself  regarded  as  the  very 
foundation  of  his  own  life.  "If  any  man  is  in  Christ,  he  is  a 
new  creature."  "  It  is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  that 
liveth  in  me."  It  was  that  which  planted  the  Pauline  gospel 
in  the  great  cities  of  the  Roman  Empire;  it  was  that  which 
dominated  Christianity,  and  through  Christianity  has  changed 
the  face  of  the  world. 

The  tremendous  difference  between  this  communion  with 
the  risen  Christ  and  mere  imitation  of  the  earthly  Jesus  has 
sometimes  been  overlooked.  In  the  eagerness  to  vindicate 
Paul  as  a  disciple  of  Jesus,  the  essential  feature  of  Paulinism 


574  JESUS   AND  PAUL 

has  been  thrust  into  the  background.  It  is  admitted,  of  course,, 
that  in  Paul's  own  estimation  the  thought  of  Christ  as  a  divine 
being,  now  Hving  in  glory,  was  fundamental.  But  the  really 
important  thing,  it  is  said,  is  the  ethical  character  that  is  at- 
tributed to  this  heavenly  being.  Paul's  heavenly  Christ  is  the 
personification  of  self-denying  love.  But  whence  was  this 
attribute  derived?  Certainly  not  from  the  Messiah  of  the 
Jewish  Apocalypses.  For  he  is  conceived  of  as  enveloped  in 
mystery,  as  hidden  from  the  world  until  the  great  day  of  his 
revealing.  The  gracious  character  of  Paul's  heavenly  Christ 
could  only  have  been  derived  from  the  historical  Jesus.  Per- 
haps directly.  The  character  of  the  historical  Jesus,  as  it  was 
known  through  tradition,  was  simply  attributed  by  Paul  to  the 
heavenly  being  with  whom  Jesus  was  identified.  Or  perhaps 
indirectly.  The  heavenly  Christ  was  for  Paul  the  personifica- 
tion of  love,  because  Paul  conceived  of  the  death  of  Christ  as 
a  supreme  act  of  loving  self-denial.  But  how  could  Paul  con- 
ceive thus  of  the  death  of  Christ?  Only  because  of  the  lov- 
ing spirit  of  Jesus  which  appeared  in  the  disciples  whom  Paul 
persecuted.  It  was  therefore  ultimately  the  character  of  the 
historical  Jesus  which  enabled  Paul  to  conceive  of  the  cruci- 
fixion as  a  loving  act  of  sacrifice ;  and  it  was  this  conception  of 
the  crucifixion  which  enabled  Paul  to  conceive  of  his  heavenly 
Christ  as  the  supreme  ideal  of  love.  Of  course,  for  Paul,  ow- 
ing to  his  intellectual  environment,  it  was  impossible  to  submit 
himself  to  this  ideal  of  love,  so  long  as  it  was  embodied  merely 
in  a  dead  teacher.  The  conception  of  the  risen  Christ  was 
therefore  necessary  historically  in  order  to  preserve  the  prec- 
ious ideal  which  had  been  introduced  into  the  world  by  Jesus: 
But  we  of  the  present  day  can  and  must  sacrifice  the  form  to 
the  content.  The  glorious  Christ  of  Paul  derives  the  real 
secret  of  his  power  over  the  hearts  of  men  not  from  his  glory, 
but  from  his  love. 

Such  reasoning  ignores  the  essence  of  Paulinism.  It  re- 
presents Paulinism  as  devotion  to  an  ideal.  If  that  were 
granted,  then  perhaps  all  the  rest  might  follow.  If  Paulinism 
is  simply  imitation  of  Christ,  then  perhaps  it  makes  little  differ- 
ence whether  Christ  be  conceived  of  as  on  earth  or  in  heaven, 
as  a  dead  prophet  or  a  living  Lord.    Past  or  present,  the  ideal, 


JESUS   AND   PAUL  575 

as  an  ideal,  remains  the  same.  But  Paulinism  is  not  imitation 
of  Christ,  but  communion  with  Christ.  That  fact  requires  no 
proof.  The  epistles  are  on  fire  with  it.  The  communion  is, 
on  the  one  hand,  intensely  personal — it  is  a  relation  of  love. 
With  Christ  Paul  can  hold  colloquies  of  the  most  intimate 
kind.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  communion  with  Christ 
transcends  human  analogies.  The  Lord  can  operate  on  the 
heart  and  life  of  Paul  in  a  way  that  is  impossible  for  any 
human  friend.  Paul  is  in  Christ  and  Christ  is  in  Paul.  The 
relation  to  the  risen  Christ  is  not  only  personal,  but  also  re- 
ligious. But  if  Paulinism  is  communion  with  Christ,  then 
quite  the  fundamental  thing  about  Christ  is  that  he  is  alive. 
It  is  sheer  folly  to  say  that  this  Pauline  Christ-religion  can  be 
reproduced  by  one  who  supposes  that  Christ  is  dead.  Such  a 
one  can  envy  the  poor  sinners  in  the  Gospels  who  received 
from  Jesus  healing  for  body  and  mind.  He  can  admire  the 
great  prophet.  When,  alas,  shall  we  find  another  like  him? 
He  can  envy  the  faith  of  others.  But  he  cannot  himself  be- 
lieve. He  cannot  hear  Jesus  say,  "  Thy  faith  hath  made 
thee  whole.  " 

When  Paulinism  is  understood  as  fellowship  with  the  risen 
Christ,  then  the  disproportionate  emphasis  which  Paul  places 
upon  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Christ  becomes  intelligi- 
ble. For  these  are  the  acts  by  which  fellowship  has  been  estab- 
lished. To  the  modern  man,  they  seem  unnecessary.  By  the 
modern  man  fellowship  with  God  is  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course.  But  only  because  of  an  imperfect  conception  of  God. 
If  God  is  all  love  and  kindness,  then  of  course  nothing  is  re- 
quired in  order  to  bring  us  into  his  presence.  But  Paul  would 
never  have  been  satisfied  with  such  a  God.  His  was  the  awful, 
holy  God  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets — and  of  Jesus.  But 
for  Paul  the  holiness  of  God  was  also  the  holiness  of  Christ. 
Communion  of  sinful  man  with  the  holy  Christ  is  a  tremen- 
dous paradox,  a  supreme  mystery.  But  the  mystery  has  been 
illumined.  It  has  been  illumined  by  the  cross.  Christ  forgives 
sin  not  because  he  is  complacent  towards  sin,  but  because  of 
his  own  free  grace  he  has  paid  the  dreadful  penalty  of  it. 
And  he  has  not  stopped  with  that.  After  the  cross  came  the 
resurrection.     Christ  rose  from  the  dead  into  a  life  of  glory 


576  JESUS   AND   PAUL 

and  power.  Into  that  glory  and  into  that  power  he  invites 
the  believer.  In  Christ  we  receive  not  only  pardon,  but  new 
and  glorious  life. 

Paul's  interpretation  of  the  death  and  resurrection  is  not 
to  be  found  in  the  words  of  Jesus.  But  hints  of  it  appear, 
even  in  the  Synoptic  discourses.  "  The  Son  of  man  came  not 
to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his  life  a 
ransom  for  many"  (Mk.  x.  45).  Modern  criticism  is  in- 
clined to  question  the  authenticity  of  that  verse.  But  if  any 
saying  of  Jesus  is  commended  by  its  form,  it  is  this  one.  The 
exquisite  gndmic  form  vindicates  the"  saying  to  the  great 
master  of  inspired  paradox.  Even  far  stronger,  however,  is 
the  attestation  of  the  words  which  were  spoken  at  the  last 
supper.  Indeed  these  are  the  most  strongly  attested  of  all 
the  words  of  Jesus;  for  the  Synoptic  tradition  is  here  sup- 
plemented by  the  testimony  of  Paul;  and  the  testimony  of  Paul 
is  also  the  testimony  of  the  tradition  to  which  he  refers.  That 
tradition  must  be  absolutely  primitive.  But  the  words  which 
Jesus  spoke  at  the  last  supper  designate  the  death  of  Jesus  as 
a  sacrifice.  And  why  should  the  idea  of  vicarious  suffering  be 
denied  to  Jesus  ?  It  is  freely  accepted  for  his  disciples  and  for 
Paul.  They  interpreted  the  death  of  Jesus  as  a  sacrifice  for 
sin,  because,  it  is  said,  the  idea  was  current  in  Judaism  of  that 
day.  But  if  the  idea  was  so  familiar,  surely  Jesus  was  more 
susceptible  to  it  than  were  his  disciples.  They  had  an  external 
conception  of  the  Kingdom,  he  regarded  the  Kingdom  as 
spiritual ;  they  exalted  power  and  worldly  position,  he  insisted 
upon  self-denial.  Was  it  then  the  disciples,  and  not  Jesus, 
who  seized  upon  the  idea  of  vicarious  suffering?  Surely  if 
Jesus  anticipated  his  death  at  all,  he  would  naturally  regard 
it  as  a  sacrificial  death.  And  to  eliminate  altogether  Jesus' 
foreknowledge  of  his  death  involves  extreme  skepticism. 
Aside  from  the  direct  predictions,  what  shall  be  done  with  Mk. 
ii.  20 :  "  But  the  days  will  come  when  the  bridegroom  shall  be 
taken  from  them,  and  then  will  they  fast  in  that  day  "  ?  If 
Jesus  expected  the  Kingdom  to  be  established  before  his  death, 
then  he  was  an  extreme  fanatic,  who  could  not  even  discern 
the  signs  of  the  times.     The  whole  spirit  of  his  life  is  op- 


JESUS  AND  PAUL  577 

posed  to  such  a  view.  Even  during  his  life,  Jesus  was  a  suffer- 
ing servant  of  Jehovah. 

Nevertheless,  the  teaching  of  Jesus  about  the  significance 
of  his  death  is  not  explicit.  It  resembles  the  mysterious  inti- 
mations of  prophecy  rather  than  the  definite  enunciation  of 
fundamental  religious  truth.  That  fact  must  be  admitted ;  in- 
deed, it  should  be  insisted  upon.  The  fundamental  Pauline 
doctrine — the  doctrine  of  the  cross — is  only  hinted  at  in  the 
words  of  Jesus.  Yet  that  doctrine  was  fundamental  not  only 
in  Paul,  but  in  the  primitive  church.  Certainly  it  has  been 
fundamental  in  historic  Christianity.  The  fundamental  doc- 
trine of  Christianity,  then,  was  not  taught  definitely  by  Jesus 
of  Nazareth.  As  a  teacher,  therefore,  Jesus  was  not  the  found- 
er of  Christianity.  He  was  the  founder  of  Christianity  not  be- 
cause of  what  he  said,  but  because  of  what  he  did.  The 
Church  revered  him  as  its  founder  only  because  his  death  was 
interpreted  as  an  event  of  cosmic  significance.  But  it  had 
such  significance  only  if  Jesus  was  a  divine  being,  come  to 
earth  for  the  salvation  of  men.  If  Jesus  was  not  a  super- 
natural person,  then  not  only  Paulinism  but  also  the  whole  of 
Christianity  is  founded  not  upon  the  lofty  teaching  of  an  in^ 
spired  prophet,  but  upon  a  colossal  error. 

Paul  was  a  disciple  of  Jesus,  if  Jesus  was  a  supernatural 
person;  he  was  not  a  disciple  of  Jesus,  if  Jesus  was  a  mere 
man.  If  Jesus  was  simply  a  human  teacher,  then  Paulinism 
defies  explanation.  Yet  it  is  powerful  and  beneficent  beyond 
compare.  Judged  simply  by  its  effects,  the  religious  experience 
of  Paul  is  the  most  tremendous  phenomenon  in  the  history  of 
the  human  spirit.  It  has  transformed  the  world  from  darkness 
into  light.  But  it  need  be  judged  not  merely  by  its  effects.  It 
lies  open  before  us.  In  the  presence  of  it,  the  sympathetic  ob- 
server is  aghast.  It  is  a  new  world  that  is  opened  before  him. 
Freedom,  goodness,  communion  with  God,  sought  by  philoso- 
phers of  all  the  ages,  attained  at  last!  The  religious  experi- 
ence of  Paul  needs  no  defense.  Give  it  but  sympathetic  atten- 
tion and  it  is  irresistible.  But  it  can  be  shared  as  well  as  ad- 
mired. The  relation  of  Paul  to  Jesus  Christ  is  essentially 
the  same  as  our  own.  The  original  apostles  had  one  element 
in  their  religious  life  which  we  cannot  share — the  memory  of 


578  JESUS  AND  PAUL 

their  daily  intercourse  with  Jesus.  That  element,  it  is  true, 
was  not  really  fundamental,  even  for  them.  But  it  appears  to 
be  fundamental;  our  fears  tell  us  that  it  was  fundamental. 
But  in  the  experience  of  Paul  there  was  no  such  element.  Like 
ourselves  he  did  not  know  Jesus  upon  earth — he  had  no 
memory  of  Galilean  days.  His  devotion  was  directed  simply 
and  solely  to  the  risen  Saviour.  Shall  we  follow  him?  We 
can  do  so  on  one  condition.  That  condition  is  not  easy.  To 
fulfil  it,  we  must  overcome  our  most  deep-seated  convictions. 
We  must  recognize  in  Jesus  a  supernatural  person.  But  un- 
less we  fulfil  that  condition,  we  can  never  share  in  the  relig- 
ious experience  of  Paul.  When  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
crisis,  we  may  shrink  back.  But  if  we  do  so,  we  make  the 
origin  of  Christianity  an  insoluble  problem.  In  exalting  the 
methods  of  scientific  history,  we  involve  ourselves  hopelessly 
in  historical  difficulty.  In  the  relation  between  Jesus  and  Paul, 
we  discover  a  problem,  which,  through  the  very  processes  of 
mind  by  which  the  uniformity  of  nature  has  been  established, 
forces  us  to  transcend  that  doctrine — ^which  pushes  us  relent- 
lessly off  the  safe  ground  of  the  phenomenal  world  toward  the 
abyss  of  supernaturalism. — ^which  forces  us,  despite  the  resis- 
tance of  the  modem  mind,  to  make  the  great  venture  of  faith, 
and  found  our  lives  no  longer  upon  what  can  be  procured  by 
human  effort  or  understood  as  a  phase  of  evolution,  but  upon 
him  who  has  linked  us  with  the  unseen  world,  and  brought  us 
into  communion  with  the  eternal  Grod. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  GOD 
OF  ISRAEL 

Isaiah  xliv:  24-28 
Oswald  Thompson  Allis 


1 


I. — Preliminary  remarks. — The  problem  of  the  Cyrus  Prophecy. 
'  II. — Hebrew  Metrics. — Textual  Criticism  based  on  metrical  considera- 
tions.— The  Qina-poem  of  Budde  and  Cheyne  and  its  defects. 
III. — The  numerico-climactic  structure  of  the  poem. — Its  basis   in  the 
theme  and  argument,  viz.  chronological  arrangement,  progressive 
definiteness,  Cyrus  the  climax. — The  irregularities  of  the  Qina- 
poem  reviewed  and  explained. 
IV. — The  Purity  of  the  Text. — Established  by  the  perfect  preservation 

of  the  Poem. 
V. — Climax  as  a  feature  of  Hebrew  Poetry,  the  two  kinds  of  climax. — 

The  double  climax  in  this  poem. 
VI. — The  date. — Arguments   for  the  Isaianic  authorship,  based  on  the 
structure  and  argument  of  the  poem. 
VII. — Concluding  remarks. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  GOD 
OF  ISRAEL^ 

It  is  a  fact  too  generally  recognized  to  require  proof,  that  the 
Isaianic  authorship  of  the  Cyrus  Prophecy  (Is.  xliv.  28-xlv.  7) 
is  regarded  as  impossible  or  at  any  rate  as  highly  improbable  by 
many  scholars  of  widely  differing  shades  of  theological  opin- 
ion. That  this  should  be  the  contention  of  antisupernaturalistic 
thinkers  is  only  to  be  expected,  for  as  Bredenkamp  has  well 
said,  "  From  a  critical  standpoint  which  denies  prophetic  pre- 
science and  reduces  it  to  premonition  or  conjecture  the  book 
of  Isaiah  must  a  priori  be  regarded  as  an  anthology  in  which 
utterances  of  writers  of  very  different  periods  have  found  a 
place.''  ^  But  it  must  be  recognized  that  there  are  scholars 
who  believe  in  miracle  and  prophecy  and  in  the  pronounced 
supernaturalism  of  revealed  religion  who  are  yet  unable  to  be- 
lieve that  the  Cyrus  prophecy  of  the  restoration  was  uttered 
at  a  time  when  the  captivity  itself  lay  yet  a  century  or  more 
in  the  future,  at  a  time  when  haughty  Babylon  had  been  hum- 
bled almost  to  the  dust  by  her  all  but  invincible  Assyrian 
neighbor,  and  when  the  Persians  were  known  to  history,  if 
indeed  they  were  known  at  all,  only  as  one  of  the  many  bar- 
baric or  semi-barbaric  Aryan  tribes,  some  of  which  yielded 
an  unwilling  homage  to  the  warrior  king  of  Assyria.^     Not 

*  The  writer  wishes  to  acknowledge  indebtedness  for  valuable  suggestions 
to  Dr.  John  D.  Davis ;  and  also  to  Drs.  R.  D.  Wilson  and  J.  Oscar  Boyd. 

'Bredenkamp,  Der  Prophet  Jesaia  (1887). 

^  According  to  Ed.  Meyer  (Encycl.  Brit,  nth  ed.  art.  "  Persis  *'),  who  re- 
gards as  untenable  the  view  that  the  Parsua  of  the  inscriptions  are  to  be 
identified  with  the  Persians,  the  latter  are  nowhere  mentioned  until  the  time 
of  Cyrus.  This  statement  of  the  case  is  not  strictly  correct  even  if  Prof. 
Meyer's  view  regarding  the  Parsua  be  accepted — and  we  will  not  enter 
upon  a  discussion  of  that  point — unless  it  can  be  proved  that  by  Paras 
(Dia  )  in  Ezek.  xxvii.  10,  Persia  is  not  meant  and  for  such  a  contention 
there  is  in  our  opinion  no  adequate  basis. 


583  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

merely  do  they  assert  that  there  is  practically  no  parallel  in  the 
Old  Testament  for  so  remarkable  a  prophecy  as  this  would 
necessarily  be  if  regarded  as  an  Isaianic  utterance.*  But  they 
tell  us  furthermore  that  the  prophecy  shows  unmistakable  in- 
dications of  exilic  composition,  that  "  Cyrus  is  mentioned  as 
one  already  well  known  as  a  conqueror  *\^  that  "  unless  he  had 
already  appeared  and  was  on  the  point  of  striking  at  Babylon 
with  all  the  prestige  of  unbroken  victory  a  great  part  of 
xl.-xlviii.  would  be  unintelligible  ".* 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  to  all  students  of  the  Old  Testament 
whose  theism  is  thoroughgoing  enough*  to  admit  that  Isaiah 
could  and  did  foresee  the  rise  and  fall  of  Babylon  and  a 
Babylonian  captivity  of  his  own  j>eople  (xiii.-xvi.23,  xxi. 
i-io,  39),  the  strongest  evidence  which  can  be  advanced 
in  favor  of  the  late  date  of  this  prophetic  utterance  is  the 
"  internal  evidence ",  the  evidence  that  the  prophecy  itself 
shows  indications  of  exilic  composition.  External  evidence  in 
support  of  late  date  is  scarcely  to  be  found.'''  The  most  that 
the  advocates  of  late  date  can  do  is  to  seek,  as  does,  for  ex- 
ample, G.  A.  Smith,  to  find  reasons  to  justify  the  rejection  of 
the  external  evidence  in  favor  of  Isaianic  authorship.  Their 
own  case  they  must  prove  if  it  is  to  be  proved  at  all,  on  the 
basis  of  "  internal  evidence  '*. 

Owing  to  the  definiteness  with  which  this  prophecy  speaks 
of  Cyrus  and  of  the  restoration  it  has  been  cited  more  fre- 
quently perhaps  than  any  other  as  requiring  exilic  dating. 
The  admission  of  this  contention  involves  necessarily  the  ques- 

*  The  "  Josiah  prophecy  ",  uttered  by  the  unnamed  prophet  of  Judah  dur- 
ing the  reign  of  Jeroboam  (i  Kings,  xiii)  is,  in  respect  of  definiteness  and 
perspective,  strikingly  parallel  to  the  "  Cyrus  prophecy ",  regarded  as  an 
Isaianic  utterance.  But  the  tendency  in  "  critical  circles  "  is  to  regard  the 
former  as  largely  if  not  entirely  Deuteronomic  (using  the  term  in  the 
sense  given  to  it  by  the  "  critics  ")  in  origin  and  to  empty  it  of  much  if 
not  all  of  its  prophetic  significance. 

"  Skinner,  Isaiah  in  the  Cambridge  Bible  Series. 

•  G.  A.  Smith,  Article  "  Isaiah  "  in  Hastings*  \Bible  Dictionary. 

'The  claim  that  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  shows  traces  of  literary  dependence  on 
post-Isaianic  writers,  e.  g.  Jeremiah,  is  very  precarious,  since  in  instances 
of  this  kind  it  is  rarely  possible  to  show  conclusively  on  which  side  the 
alleged  dependence  lies. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  583 

tion  of  the  relation  in  which  this  exiHc  passage  stands  to  the 
larger  context  of  which  it  forms  a  part.  This  question  has 
been  answered  in  two  ways.  It  is  argued  on  the  one  hand 
that  it  is  a  later  addition  to  an  Isaianic  document  (Interpolation 
Hypothesis)  ;  on  the  other  hand  it  is  affirmed  or  rather  as- 
sumed that  it  is  an  integral  part  of  the  document  and  as  such 
may  be  regarded  as  furnishing  a  legitimate  criterion  for  ascer-^ 
taining  the  date  of  the  whole,  or  at  least  of  a  large  part  of 
xl-lxvi.  (Deutero-Isaianic  Hypothesis). 

To  discuss  these  two  hypotheses  as  fully  as  they  deserve 
would  carry  us  too  far  afield,  since  it  is  impossible  to  esti- 
mate them  justly  in  their  bearing  upon  the  Cyrus  prophecy 
without  considering  more  or  less  fully  their  bearing  upon  the 
whole  "  Book  of  Consolation  "  and  even  upon  the  entire  book 
of  Isaiah.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  while  in  the  one  the  question 
of  the  authenticity  of  the  allusion  to  Cyrus  as  a  part  of  the 
prophecy  and  of  the  prophecy  itself  as  a  constituent  part  of  ther 
Latter  Part  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  occupies  a  very  prominent 
place,  in  the  other  this  question  is,  at  the  outset  at  least,  scarcely 
raised,  the  acceptance  of  the  integrity  of  the  record,  of  the 
genuineness  of  the  passages  which  seem  most  clearly  exilic, 
making  the  argument  for  the  late  date  doubly  strong.*  These 
rival  hypotheses  set  forth  the  two  great  problems  involved  in 
the  investigation  of  the  Cyrus  prophecy,  viz.,  its  unity  and 
integrity  and  the  date  of  its  composition. 

*  It  should  be  remarked,  of  course,  at  this  point  that,  although  the  advo- 
cates of  the  latter  hypothesis,  far  from  finding  any  dogmatic  objection  to 
the  integrity  of  the  Cyrus  prophecy,  as  part  of  an  exilic  document,  find  in 
it  a  strong  argument  for  the  late  date  of  the  chapters  of  which  it  forms  a 
part,  this  hypothesis  has  at  the  same  time  long  ceased  to  stand  for  the 
integrity  and  unity  of  chaps,  xl.-lxvi.  as  constituting  such  an  exilic  docu- 
ment. Deut.-Isa.  is  now  limited  to  about  one  half  (chaps,  xl.-lv.,  Duhm, 
Marti)  or  one  third  (chaps,  xl.-xlviii.,  Cheyne)  of  the  whole,  and  it  is 
regarded  by  Cheyne,  Duhm  and  Marti  as  very  extensively  interpolated. 
So,  although  in  1839  Havernick  was  able  to  cite  such  champions  of  this 
hypothesis  as  Gesenius,  De  Wette,  Rosenmiiller  and  Hitzig,  as  affirming 
the  unity  of  authorship  of  the  Book  of  Consolation,  in  the  opinion  of 
many  of  the  present  advocates  of  this  view,  this  group  of  prophecies  is 
rather  to  be  regarded  as  a  "  prophetic  anthology  ".  Marti  goes  so  far  as 
to  call  the  book  of  Isaiah  "a  little  library  of  prophetic  writings".  And 
as  we  shall  see  presently,  the  "  Metricists  "  have  not  shown  any  hesitancy  in 


I 


584  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  article  to  ascertain  whether  the 
claim  that  the  Cyrus  prophecy,  either  in  whole  or  in  part, 
shows  indications  of  exilic  composition  is  as  well  grounded  as 
the  frequent  assertions  to  that  effect  would  seem  to  indicate. 
As  will  appear  in  the  course  of  the  discussion,  the  poetical  form 
of  a  part  of  the  prophecy,  viz.,  xliv.  24-28,  has  a  very  import- 
ant bearing  upon  both  of  the  questions  at  issue.  And  it  is  to 
this  feature,  therefore,  that  we  will  devote  the  chief  attention. 

Hebrew  Metrics  anp  the  Qina  Arrangement  of  Is.  xliv. 
24  (23) -28  Proposed  by  Budde  and  Cheyne 

While  the  rare  p>oetic  beauty  of  many  portions  of  the  Old 
Testament  not  included  in  the  so-called  poetical  books  has  al- 
ways been  more  or  less  recognized — how  could  any  apprecia- 
tive and  careful  reader  fail  to  recognize  it  in  a  book  so  mark- 
edly poetic  as,  for  example,  the  Book  of  Consolation! — and 
while  many  attempts  have  been  made  to  solve  the  problem  of 
Hebrew  Poetry,  it  is  only  within  a  comparatively  short  time, 
within,  we  may  say,  the  thirty  years  which  have  elapsed  since 
Julius  Ley  published  his  Hebrdische  Metrik  that  much  has  been 
accomplished  in  the  way  of  opening  up  what,  as  Grimme  re- 
marks, is  usually  regarded  as  an  especially  "  slippery  "  field.^ 
These  investigations  have  proved  that  Hebrew  poetry  was 
accentual  and  not  quantitative,  that  the  character  of  the  verse 
was  determined  primarily  by  the  number  of  accents  which  it 
contained  and  that  the  ratio  between  accented  and  unaccented 
syllables  was  not  a  matter  of  no  consequence  but  had  certain 
more  or  less  clearly  defined  limits.  The  prominent  role  of  the 
caesura  has  been  recognized  and  various  metrical  forms  have 
been  distinguished.  There  is  considerable  difference  of  opin- 
ion, however,  in  regard  to  a  number  of  important  questions 
e.  g.  the  limits  of  the  foot,  if  we  may  use  the  word  to  desig- 

altering  the  text  on  the  basis  of  metrical  considerations.  Consequently 
it  would  be  a  very  mistaken  notion  to  suppose  that  the  advocates  of  the 
Deut.-Isa.  hypothesis  are  defenders  of  the  integrity  or  unity  of  this  group 
of  prophecies. 

•H.  Grimme,  Grundsiige  der  heb.  Akzent-  und  Vokallehre,  S.  58 
"  dieses  als  besonders  schliipfrig  verschrieene  Gebiet  (d.  h.  der  biblischen 
Metrik)". 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  585 

Bate  an  accented  syllable  together  with  the  unaccented  sylla- 
bles which  are  connected  with  it/^  accent  elision,  which  occurs 
especially  frequently  with  monosyllabic  words  or  stat.  const, 
complexes,  double  accent  of  polysyllabic  words,  the  shifting  of 
the  accent  and  the  problem  of  the  strophe — these  are  some  of 
the  questions  which  have  still  to  be  more  thoroughly  investi- 
gated. Furthermore  the  question  to  what  extent  the  metres 
were  uniform,  to  what  extent  irregular  or  mixed  is  unsettled. 
Even  more  unsettled  is  the  question  as  to  the  degree  in  which 

"  Sievers  (Metrische  Studien)  finds  the  most  usual  feet  xj.,  x  xi  which 
maybe  modified  to  x  »r><  and  xx  S^,  respectively.  (N.B.  x  represents  the  un- 
accented syllable  and    x   the  accented,  while  vTx  represents  the  simple  ac- 
cented syllable    jl  replaced  by  an  accented  syllable  .^i  immediately  followed 
by  an   unaccented  syllable  belonging  to  the  same   foot.)      But  he  also 
regards   /  and  x  x  x  ^  and  their  modifications,  i.  e.,  Sx  and  x^x^  as  ad- 
missable  though  less  frequent  forms,  i.  e.,  the  number  of  unaccented  syl- 
lables may  vary  from  none  to  four.     (Cf.  Sievers'  Metrische  Studien,  p. 
'99,  §  71,  3,  Die  normalste  Form  des  heb.    Versfusses  ist  dreisilbiges  x  x  ^ 
bez.   dessen  Auflosung  (§  19)  xx^x  ;  doch  konnen  daneben  infolge  andrer 
Phasierung  auch  einfaches  ^  ,  ferner  x  z  und  x  x  xz  nebst  deren  Auflos- 
ungen  auftreten.)      Sievers  has  approached  the  subject  primarily   from 
the  standpoint  of  Phonetics  and  Metrics.     Ley  laid  emphasis  upon  the 
character  of  the  Heb.  syllable  and  the  law  of  ascent   (das  Gesetz  der 
Ascendenz,  Abstufung),  according  to  which  the  character  and  position 
of  a  syllable  determines  whether  it  is  accented  or  unaccented.    He  recog- 
nized five  syllable  gradations,  the  highest  being  the  syllable  which  regu- 
larly receives  the  main  accent,  the  lowest  the  syllable  with  the  half  vowel 
(vocal  shewa).     Since  the  law  of  accent  as  defined  by  him  required  that 
within  the  foot,  there  be  always  progress  upward,  it  is  consequently  clear 
that,  according  to  his  view,  a  foot  could  not  exceed  five  syllables  in  length. 
(Were  a   syllable  followed  by  another  of  a  lower  instead  of  a  higher 
grade,  it  must  be  accented.)     It  usually  consisted  of  less  than  five  and  Ley 
recognized  that  it  might  consist  of  a  single  accented  syllable  unaccom- 
panied by  unaccented  syllables.    He  also  recognized  the  legitimacy  of  the 
frequently  occurring  unaccented  syllable  after  the  accent  which  he  calls 
^*  Tonfall ",   and  which  appears,  as  we  have  seen,  in   Sievers  '  modified 
foot ',  as  well  as  the  fact  that  the  inseparable  prepositions,  the  conjunction 
waw  and  a  number  of  short  words,  prepositions,  etc.,  are  used  proclitically 
and  have  no  accent.    And  he  also  perceived  that  the  character  of  a  line, 
light  or  sonorous,  joyous  or  sad,  is  largely  determined  by  the  ratio  of  the 
unaccented  to  the  accented  syllables.     In  view  of  these  facts  it  is  clearly 
unjust  when  Sievers  (Metrische  Studien,  p.  45,  §  58),  who  in  the  main 
shows  great  readiness  to  recognize  the  value  of  Ley's  investigations,  states 
that,  according  to  the  view  held  by  Ley  and  his  followers,  "the  Hebrew 


r 


586  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

the  prose  literature  of  the  Old  Testament  especially  the  "  Latter 
Prophets "  may  be  regarded  as  metrical.  David  Hv^inrich 
Miiller^^  finds  in  them  a  very  marked  strophical  but  no  metri- 
cal form.  That  there  is  an  epic  poetry  in  Hebrew  in  which,  in 
contrast  e.  g.  to  the  lyric,  the  rigid  paraHelismus  membrorum 
need  not  be  present  was  recognized  by  Ley,  thus  widening  the 
conception  of  Hebrew  poetry  to  include  more  than  the  pre- 
ponderatingly  lyric  poetry  of  the  "  Poetical  Books  ",  and  is 
more  fully  appreciated  to-day.  But  the  extent  of  this  epic 
poetry  as  well  as  of  the  lyric  in  these  books  is  still  very  far 
from  being  definitely  settled.  A  passage  which  one  scholar 
would  treat  as  poetry  in  the  strict  sense,  another  may  regard 
as  merely  an  example  of  lofty  and  what  we  may  call  poetic 
prose. 

In  view  of  these  facts  the  according  of  an  important  place 
to  metrical  considerations  in  the  treatment  of  questions  involv- 
ing Textual  Criticism  is  ill-advised  and  unfortunate. ^^     The 

verse  consists  of  a  number  of  accented  syllables  (Anzahl  von  Hebungen) 
which  further  can  be  surrounded  fairly  ad  libitum  with  a  varying  number 
of  unaccented  syllables ".  The  limits  of  Ley's  foot  are  practically  the 
same  as  those  of  Sievers,  as  far  as  the  number  of  admissible  syllables  is 
concerned  and  the  data  just  given  which  are  based  on  Ley's  own  state- 
ments show  clearly  that  the  arrangement  of  said  syllables  was  fully  as 
rigidly  controlled  in  Ley's  scheme  as  it  is  in  Sievers'. 

^Die  Propheten  in  ihrer  ursprUnglichen  Form.    Wien,  1896. 

"Grimme  (cf.  Abriss  der  bib.  heb.  Metrik,  ZDMG.  50,  529)  considers 
this  the  main  purpose  of  metrical  study,  as  compared  with  which  the  more 
perfect  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  a  poetical  passage  which  naturally  re- 
sults from  a  thorough  understanding  of  its  metrical  form  is  a  secondary 
consideration.  Marti  feels  "that  the  surprising  help  in  healing  and  re- 
storing the  text  which  comes  from  giving  heed  to  metre  and  strophe 
makes  it  impossible  to  doubt  that  in  the  accepting  of  both,  we  have  to  do 
with  no  fiction."  He  regards  them  indeed  as  not  inferior  to  the  witness 
of  the  ancient  versions.  But  he  says :  "  in  detail  it  must  be  admitted  that 
much  which  concerns  metrics  is  still  uncertain."  Cheyne  remarks,  (cf.  The 
Book  of  Isaiah  in  Hebrew,  pg.  7<S  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  Old 
Testament  series),  "among  the  grounds  of  alterations  those  which 
have  regard  to  metre  and  rhythm  can  no  longer  be  neglected,  especially 
in  view  of  the  present  stage  of  cuneiform  research."  This  latter 
statement  is  a  little  hard  to  understand.  If  Cheyne  means  by  it  that  the 
prominence  of  metrical  questions  at  present  is  due  to  the  advance  made  in 
the  Assyrian  field,  the  statement  is  opposed  by  the  facts.    Ley  and  Sievers 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  587 

"  metricist  "  often  attempts  to  alter  the  text  to  suit  a  certain- 
metrical  scheme,  when  the  fact  that  it  does  not  readily  admit  of 
such  an  arrangement  should  rather  be  taken  as  an  indication 
that  the  metrical  scheme  is  either  itself  at  fault  or  at  any  rate 
not  applicable  to  the  passage  to  which  he  wishes  to  apply  it. 

attacked  the  problem  entirely  without  reference  to  Assyrian ;  Ley  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  "  old  Germanic  accented  poetry "  and  Sievers  who  is 
Professor  of  Phonetics  in  Leipzig,  from  the  standpoint  of  metrics  and 
rhythm  and  it  was  only  after  he  had  developed  his  system  for  Hebrew 
poetry  that  he  applied  it  at  the  suggestion  of  Prof.  Zimmern  to  Assyrian. 
Grimme  has  devoted  especial  attention  to  Syriac  metrics  but  not  to 
Assyrian  and  further  claims  to  be  primarily  a  disciple  of  Ley.  Budde, 
the  discoverer  of  the  Qina- Verse,  whose  theory  is  described  in  Gesenius- 
Kautzsch  (Gesenius,  Hebrew  Grammar,  26th  ed.  by  Kautzsch,  Engl.  ed.  by 
Collins  and  Cowley,  §  2,  r.)  as  "the  only  sound  one"  shows  nowhere 
dependence  on  the  Assyr.  Bab.  Instead  he  regarded  the  fact  that  the 
Qina  verse  early  lost  its  distinctive  character,  being  found  in  passages 
which  are  in  no  sense  dirges  (Qina),  (according  to  Grimme,  Budde  has 
reversed  matters,  the  Qina  verse  being  but  a  special  application  of  the 
more  widely  applicable  pentameter  line)  an  argument  for  the  antiquity  of 
the  verse  form  and  he  considered  it  pre-Davidic.  That  the  discovery  of  a 
similar  accentual  poetry  in  Assyr.-Bab.,  more  especially  the  finding  of  sev- 
eral tablets  in  which  the  words  of  the  poems  are  arranged  in  columns 
seemingly  with  reference  to  the  metrical  form  (cf.  Zimmern  &  Scheil),  is  a 
valuable  confirmation  of  the  results  already  independently  obtained  in  the 
Old  Testament  field  is  clear.  But  it  cannot  be  claimed  that  our  knowledge 
of  Hebrew  Metrics  is  in  any  special  sense  the  result  of  or  dependent  upon 
"  cuneiform  research  ".  If,  on  the  other  hand,  as  is  more  probable,  Cheyne 
means  that  the  predominantly  poetical  form  of  the  religious  literature  of 
the  Babylonians  necessitates  the  assumption  that  a  large  part  if  not  all 
of  the  prophetic  literature  of  the  OT.  must  have  originally  partaken  of 
the  same  poetical  character,  this  is  an  assertion  which  must  be  proved. 
If  the  "  Prophets  "  show  the  same  or  similar  forms,  well  and  good.  This 
does  not  prove  that  they  are  Babylonian  and  not  merely  Semitic  forms, 
and,  even  granted  that  they  are  originally  Babylonian,  this  proves  nothing 
with  regard  to  the  date  of  their  appearance  in  Hebrew  literature.  (Zim- 
mern tells  us  that  the  religious  hymns  of  the  Babylonians  which  show  the 
Babylonian  metres  in  their  purest  form  remained  for  3000  years  practically 
the  same.  Consequently  they  could  have  been  known  to  Abraham  when  he 
lived  in  Ur  of  the  Chaldees.)  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  do  not  show  the 
same  metres,  or  if  no  metre  is  distinguishable,  the  attempt  to  force  prose 
passages  into  Bab.  metres  can  only  proceed  from  and  be  justified  by  that 
"  panbabylonianistic "  tendency,  which  seeks  to  deny  to  the  Jews  all 
initiative  and  independence. 


588  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

Such  a  procedure  at  once  raises  the  question  of  the  validity 
of  textual  emendation  on  the  basis  of  purely  metrical  con- 
siderations,^* whether  the  aim  be  to  restore  an  original  poem 
the  mutilated  remains  of  which  are  clearly  discernible,  so  we 
are  told,  in  the  Massoretic  Text,  or  to  arrange  a  prose  passage 
in  the  metrical  form,  which  it  must  have  had,  they  argue,  be- 
cause of  the  analogy  of  the  religious  literature  of  the  Baby- 
lonians, or  for  some  other  reason  of  a  similar  character. 

In  1892,  Budde,  the  discoverer  of  the  "Qina"  ^*  measure, 
defended  his  method,  which  involves  textual  emendation, 
against  the  Objections  raised  by  "  a-  most  distinguished " 
scholar,  whose  name  he  did  not  state,  who  objecting  to  Budde's 
method  declared  "  least  of  all  can  I  grant  permission  to  under- 
take the  altering  of  the  text,  on  the  basis  of  a  presupposed 
Qina-verse  theory  ",  as  follows :  "  Under  no  circumstances  do 
I  start  out  with  the  intention  of  forcing  any  passage  into  the 
Qina-verse  mould.  On  the  contrary  the  study  of  the  verse  is 
always  the  first  thing,  and  only  when  the  data  thus  ob- 
tained preponderate  for  a  certain  compass,"  [i.  e.,  when  a 
majority  of  the  lines  have  been  shown  to  be  Qina] ,  "  do  I  de- 
cide to  lay  hold  of  it.  But  then  I  can  not  relinquish  the  sec- 
ond prerogative  which  is  gladly  conceded  in  dealing  with  other 
passages  ;^^  viz.  to  undertake  textual  emendations,  not  on  the 
basis  of  a  presupposed  Qina-verse  theory,  but  on  the  basis  of 
the  evidence  of  an  intended  use  of  the  verse,  in  order  to 
restore  to  its  rights  as  far  as  is  possible  that  which  was  in- 
tended by  the  poet."  A  praiseworthy  aim  certainly!  But 
we  may  ask  does  the  presence  of  a  preponderance  of  what  may 

"  It  is  to  be  observed  that  we  are  not  here  discussing  the  Interpolation 
Hypothesis,  which  for  reasons  already  indicated  regards  the  allusion  to 
Cyrus  an  interpolation,  but  a  very  different  question,  viz.,  whether  purely 
metrical  considerations  can  of  themselves  prove  textual  corruption  or 
justify  textual  emendation. 

"The  Qina  line  is  pentameter  and  has  the  caesura  after  the  third  foot 
so  that  the  line  falls  apart  into  two  members,  the  first,  which  is  the  longer 
having  three  accents,  the  second  but  two.  The  occurrence  of  this  measure 
in  a  large  portion  of  the  Book  of  Lamentations  has  given  rise  to  the 
name  Qina,  i.  e,  lamentation  (nrp)  verse. 

"The  reference  here  seems  to  be  to  lyric  passages,  since  the  other  objec- 
tion of  the  "  distinguished  unknown "  is  to  the  application  of  a  lyric 
measure  to  non-lyric  passages. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  589 

be  regarded  as  Qina  lines  in  a  given  passage  establish  beyond 
perad venture  the  fact  that  a  Qina  poem  is  "  what  was  intended 
by  the  poet "  ?  Can  Budde  or  anyone  else  be  positive  that  in 
making  alterations  he  will  merely  be  restoring  the  poet  to  his 
rights  and  not  rather  giving  him  what  he  feels  were  or  ought 
to  have  been  his  rights,  and  there  is  no  small  difference  be- 
tween the  two. 

We  are  prepared  to  test  the  validity  of  Budde's  method  in 
general,  the  permissability  of  textual  emendation  on  the  basis 
of  purely  metrical  considerations  by  considering  its  applica- 
bility to  the  Cyrus  Prophecy,  xliv.  24-28.  This  we  may  do  the 
more  readily  in  view  of  the  fact  that  it  is  one  of  fifteen  pas- 
sages of  varying  length  in  the  second  half  of  Isaiah  which 
were  cited  by  Budde  in  1891  {ZATW.  xii.  11.  234  ff),  as 
requiring  the  Qina  verse  form  and  his  arrangement  in  a  some- 
what modified  form  is  adopted  by  most  critics  at  the  present 
time.     This  arrangement  will  be  found  on  the  opposite  page. 

According  to  Budde's  count  this  passage  is  composed  of 
fourteen  lines,  only  four  of  which  are  "  damaged  ",  i.  e.  non- 
Qina  lines,  nearly  three  fourths  of  the  poem  being  in  and  of 
itself  Qina.  Lines  5  and  6  consist  of  three  half  lines  in- 
stead of  two  whole  lines.  Line  9  has  a  word  too  many  and 
line  10  lacks  a  second  member.  In  line  9  he  proposed  the 
reading  "and  his  counsel  (inspl)"  as  a  substitute  for  the 
reading  of  the  Massoretic  Text  **  and  the  counsel  of  his  mes- 
sengers (1''^«^D  nxpl)".  But  in  line  10  he  confined  himself  to 
calling  attention  to  the  fact  that  in  the  second  reference  to 
Jerusalem  (line  14)  the  reference  to  the  Temple  supplies  the 
second  member  while  in  the  first  reference  (line  10)  a  second 
member  is  lacking. 

According  to  Budde's  method  as  explained  by  himself  this 
poem  must  therefore  have  been  originally  a  Qina  poem  since 
more  than  a  majority  of  its  lines  are  in  his  opinion  Qina  lines 
and  therefore  alterations  with  a  view  to  "  restoring  the  poet 
to  his  rights  "  are  fully  warranted.  Other  scholars  (Cheyne, 
Duhm,  Marti)  have  attempted  a  more  thorough  restoration 
than  Budde,  though  along  the  same  general  lines.  These 
scholars  consider  the  first  member  of  line  14,  i.  e.  the  second 
reference  to  Jerusalem,  which  has  been  already  referred  to,  a 


'  .5   c   g 


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t;  ►L  <y 

-i  -o  ts 


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<  H  H  W 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  591 

corrupt  repetition  of  the  first  member  of  line  10,  and  they  feel 
that  the  second  member  of  line  14  really  belongs  to  line  10. 
Consequently  by  rejecting  the  first  part  of  line  14  as  spurious 
and  restoring  the  second  member  to  its  original  (?)  position 
as  the  second  member  of  line  10  the  latter  is  "  healed  "  and  the 
poem  merely  loses  half  a  line.^®  The  reducing  of  the  second 
member  of  line  9  from  three  to  two  words  is  accepted.  And 
thus  from  line  7  on  they  obtain  a  perfect  Qina  poem.  But 
they  find  it  much  more  difficult  to  account  for  the  three  mem- 
bers of  lines  5  and  6,  which  should  be  represented  by  two  Qina 
lines.  It  is  possible  to  treat  them  as  i^  Qina  lines,^^  but 
difficult  to  get  two  full  lines  without  making  additions  to  the 
text.  Cheyne  thinks  that  in  view  of  its  extra  length  line6 — 
he  adopts  the  second  arrangement  given  on  pg.  590  (note  17) 
— may  be  regarded  as  making  up  for  the  shortness  of  the  pre- 
ceeding  line,  which  in  his  arrangement  seems  clearly  to  need 
a  second  member.  Duhm  suggests  the  following  arrangement : 
I-am  Jehovah  that-maketh-all  that-stretcheth-forth  heavens 

Alone,  spreading-out  the-earth  who-was  with-me*^ 

'*  Marti  thinks  that  the  "he  performeth  "  (dSk^^  )  of  line  9  (v.  26a)  was 
taken  over  from  line  13  and  therefore,  although  rejecting  it  in  line  9  as  a 
corruption,  reading  with  Duhm  and  Cheyne  "and  the  counsel  of  his 
messengers"  (vdkSd  nv;n)  in  preference  to  the  emendation  proposed  by 
Budde,  he  feels  justified  in  inserting  after  line  9,  line  14,  i.  e.  line  14b, 
since  line  14a  he  regards  as  a  corruption  of  loa. 

-" "  That-stretcheth-forth  heavens "  (  U'm  r\m  )  can  probably  be  in- 
cluded under  a  single  accent,  although  it  would  naturally  require  two.  The 
same  is  true  of  "  who  (was)  with  me  "  Cr\K  "'D)  (if  the  Qre  "  by-myself  " 
were  adopted,  more  than  one  accent  would  be  impossible).  The  member 
scans  well  either  way.  Rokd*  ha'dres  mi*  ittizrz^  accents  (  xzxz^j.ys)  a 
perfectly  uniform  measure,  or  roka  ha'dres  mi*  itti  =  3  accents  (xxxxnx 
vTx)  the  accent  receding  in  pause  and  the  "mi"  losing  its  accent  in 
view  of  the  accented  syllable  which  thus  immediately  follows. 

21  Q'm  tmd:         hj  nlJ';;  nin^  oj« 

Duhm  also  emends  "  and  of  the  cities  of  Judah  "  (  miH'  n;rSl  )  v.  26  to 
read  "  and  of  the  ruins  of  the  land  "  (  nDl«  'yh)  )  declaring,  "  in  the  third 
'long  verse'"  [i.  e.,  line  11  of  Budde's  poem,  the  third  line  of  the  second 
strophe  according  to  Cheyne,  Duhm  and  Marti]  "the  LXX  has  'Idovfuilas 
instead  of  'lovdalas;  the  HDIK  which  lies  back  of  it  is  better  than  the 
Judah  which  is  derived  from  C  40,  9;  since  the  suffix  of  n'm3"in  clearly 
refers  to  it.    Further  the  changing  of  n;r  into  "j;   cannot  be  avoided,  as 


t 


5^  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

But,  as  Cheyne  argues,  the  placing  of  the  adverb  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  second  line  is  inadmissable.  And  at  best  the 
arrangement  is  forced  and  awkward  and  would  do  little  credit 
to  the  poet  although  it  technically  fulfils  the  requirements  of 
a  Qina  line.  Cheyne,  Duhm  and  Marti  further  find  the  be- 
ginning of  the  poem  or  strophe,  not  at  verse  23  but  at  verse 
24  and  Cheyne  considers  verse  23  which  consisted  according 
to  Budde  of  three  Qina  lines,  (the  "  long  verse  "  of  Duhm)  to 
be  composed  rather  of  six  short  or  single  member  lines  and 
in  either  case  it  must  be  admitted  that  they  are  somewhat  ir- 

the  latter  harmonizes  better  with  the  second  half  of  the  line,  especially  with 
the  singular  suffix,  than  does  the  n;?  which  draws  upon  itself  the  accent 
which  belongs  to  niDK  ".  An  investigation  of  the  usage  of  the  LXX 
makes  it  clear  that  in  substituting  mOK  for  mm'  on  the  basis  of  the 
LXX,  Duhm  has  not  only  overstated  the  facts  ( ISovfialai  is  only  found  in 
Cod.  B.)  but  has  also  drawn  conclusions  from  them  for  which  there  is 
very  little  warrant.  The  facts  are  these :  i )  A  number  of  instances  can  be 
cited  where  proper  names  are  confused  and  interchanged  in  the  versions. 
In  Hatch  and  Redpath's  Concordance  seven  other  instances  are  given  where 
in  one  or  more  of  the  Codices  'UovfMla  renders  another  proper  name  of 
somewhat  similar  sound,  in  six  instances  it  is  as  here  min*  in  one  Duma 
Similarly  four  instances  are  given  where 'l5ou/«i/a  in  the  Greek  represents 
another  proper  name  in  the  Hebrew,  showing  that  proper  names  are  occa- 
sionally confused.  2)  HDIK  is,  on  the  other  hand,  accurately  rendered. 
Only  two  cases  are  cited  by  Hatch  &  Redpath  where  it  was  confused  with 
other  words.  In  Neh.  ix.  i  it  is  rendered  "  ashes  ",  evidently  because  the 
preceeding  word  is  "  sackcloth  ",  which  suggests  the  common  phrase  "  sack- 
cloth and  ashes".  In  Isaiah  xv.  9  it  is  rendered  "AdafM  (Admah).  If 
by  this  word  UIH  (Edom)  is  meant,  we  have  here  one  instance  in  more 
than  one  hundred  where  nD"U<  and  D^X  were  confounded.  A  confusion 
is  natural  in  this  instance  in  view  of  the  mention  of  Petra  (Sela)  in  the 
next  verse.  In  Isaiah  xliv.  26  on  the  contrary  an  allusion  to  Edom  is 
most  inappropriate  and,  had  the  original  word  been  HDnK,  there  is  every 
reason  to  suppose  that  it  would  have  been  rendered  "  land  ".  The  natural 
explanation  of  the  occurrence  of  'ISov/mia  in  B  is  "confusion  of  proper 
names  "  and  the  best  codices  of  the  LXX  as  also  the  Syr.,  the  Latin  and 
the  Targum  of  Jonathan  support  the  min"  of  the  Hebrew  text.  Retain- 
ing, therefore,  as  we  have  every  reason  for  doing,  the  reading  "Judah", 
we  are  entirely  justified  in  retaining  the  reading  "cities",  "cities  of 
Judah  ",  a  phrase  which  is  clearly  parallel  to  the  word  "  Jerusalem  "  in  the 
first  member.  That  the  singular  pronoun  "  her- waste-places  "  is  an  indi- 
cation of  corrupt  text,  cannot  be  argued,  since  this  pronoun  may  find  its 
antecedent  in  "  Judah  "  or  even  in  "  Jerusalem  ". 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  593 

regular,  (the  first  line  being  4-3,  not  3-2).  If  the  first  three 
lines  of  Budde's  poem  are  rejected  as  at  least  questionable,  (and 
at  any  rate  a  new  paragraph  begins  more  naturally  at  verse  24 
than  at  verse  23),  and  if  the  fourteenth  line  despite  the  fact 
that  it  is  pentameter  (Qina)  is  sacrificed  for  the  purpose  of 
restoring  the  incomplete  tenth  line  a  fairly  good  Qina  poem 
(see  next  page^^)  of  two  strophes  of  five  lines  each  is  obtained, 
a  poem  reconstructed  out  of  a  mutilated  poem  of  eleven  lines, 
five  lines  of  which  were  in  need  of  alterations^  and  two  lines  of 
which  remain  imperfect  if  with  Cheyne  we  reject  Duhm's 
forced  and  awkward  construction  for  lines  2  and  3.  In  other 
words  of  these  eleven  lines  only  six  have  been  preserved  in  their 
original  form  and  five  need  amending  in  order  that  the  original 
form  of  the  poem  may  be  obtained.  And  he  who  will  by  this 
method  '*  restore  the  poet  to  his  rights  "  must  argue  that  six  out 
of  eleven  lines,  a  scant  majority,  prove  that  the  Qina  form  was 
the  one  originally  intended  by  the  writer. 

^  This  is  primarily  a  translation  of  Cheyne's  arrangement  of  the  Hebrew 
Text  as  given  in  the  Book  of  Isaiah  in  Hebrew.  His  translation  in  the 
"  English  Polychrome "  has  been  consulted  and  followed  fairly  closely. 
But  the  translation  has  been  modified  at  several  points  with  a  view  to  mak- 
ing the  poetic  structure  as  plain  as  possible  in  the  English.  His  Hebrew 
Text  is  as  follows  (several  pointings  and  diacritical  marks  are  here  omit- 
ted) : 

h:^  rwv  mn''  '•Di« 
bh^r\'  D'^DDpi  q''^3  nin«  nap 

DDip«  rT'mnnm  nraan  mm*'  •'nj;^i 

^  Viz.  lines  2  and  3,  which,  according  to  Budde,  are  three  half  lines  where 
we  would  expect  two  whole  lines,  line  6b  which  has  been  reduced  from  a 
three  accent  to  a  two  accent  member,  and  line  7  which  is  made  up  of  two 
imperfect  lines,  viz.,  7a  and  what  would  otherwise  be  line  lib  (Budde's 
line  14b). 


I 


'X 

I 


x4> 

X      o       o 


^     T 


«   bo 

CO  JS 

•I  c 

•Si 

4>   'C 


c   o 


V     (U    c 

S    >    ^ 
I    ^    ^ 

*0    ^     ^ 

*>    be    I 

?  ^  i 

►^  -c  ^ 
x>  a 

s  si 


a>  o 

C  ^ 

6  pq 

IS  <u 

i  I 

V  > 

o  V 


c   c 

OS    rt 


?       2 

s  ?  ? 


O     >    O 


>.^ 


«    H-  :=: 


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c   c   c 

(«     («     c« 


^ 

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> 

IS 

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►-1  -o  -r 


I  o  . 

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O  qjj  5 

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(A    cn 
in     V) 


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5    to 


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^"tJ^  g^'bo<g 

4>     4;     1)     »^    to    c     «0 

C     C     «-«       .       .   .t3 

>l  .  S      Or     CX     Oi  *0      O4 

**<,..  rt       . 

JC       tfl     ^     M-i     t+H*       4>     Ml 

u  :s  ffi  u  o  Pi  u 

S      "^  S     8     8     S     S 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  595 

Notwithstanding  the  serious  difficulties  connected  with  its 
application,  the  view  that  the  Qina  arrangement  of  this  poem  is 
the  true  one  seems  to  have  been  very  favorably  received  in 
"  critical  circles  ",  cf.,  e.  g.,  the  recent  commentaries  of  Box 
and  Glazebrook.  But  we  are  justified  none  the  less  in 
raising  the  question  whether  the  inference  drawn  from  the 
presence  of  6  Qina  lines  in  a  10  line  poem  (if  the  seventh  Qina 
line,  line  14  of  Budde's  poem,  be  used  to  restore  a  mutilated 
line  it  must  be  itself  treated  as  corrupt)  or,  according  to  Budde, 
of  10  Qina  lines  in  a  14  line  poem  that  the  whole  poem  must 
originally  have  been  Qina  is  so  compelling  as  to  warrant 
attempts  at  restoration?  We  have  examined  the  alterations 
which  have  been  proposed  and  find  that  except  for  one  line 
the  redacted  poem  (cf.  Cheyne's  arrangement)  may  be  called 
a  Qina  poem.  But  it  is  well  to  remember  that  these  textual 
alterations  are  made  largely  if  not  entirely  independently  of 
and  without  the  support  of  the  ancient  versions.  In  so  far  then 
as  they  may  claim  warrant  at  all  for  these  alterations  it 
must  be  found  in  the  evidence  that  the  Qina  form  was  intended. 
And  despite  the  "  majority  of  Qina  lines  "  we  are  prepared  to 
assert  that  the  inference  drawn  from  them  that  the  poem  was 
originally  Qina  is  not  warranted  in  view  of  the  number  of 
lines  which  can  only  with  more  or  less  difficulty  be  redacted 
into  the  Qina  form. 

The  Numerico-Climactic  Arrangement  and  the  Argu- 
ment OF  THE  Poem 

Let  us  begin  with  verse  twenty- four  and  analyze  the  para- 
graph for  ourselves.  The  first  line,  "  Thus  saith  Jehovah  thy 
redeemer  and  thy  fashioner  from  the  womb  "  which  has  the 
Qina  form  is  clearly  introductory  to  the  brief  emphatic  dec- 
laration "  I  am  Jehovah  "  (  niH''  •'D3S  )•  This  declaration  is 
followed  by  nine  participial  clauses  of  varying  length,  which, 
while  all  depending  upon  and  qualifying  it  directly,  at  the  same 
time  form  three  distinct  groups.  The  first  group  is  composed 
of  three  single  member  lines  each  of  which  begins  with  a 
qal  participle.  The  second  group  consists  of  three  two  member 
lines,  the  first  members  being  introduced  by  hiph'il  participles 


596  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

and  the  second  members  being  joined  to  the  first  by  "  and  " 
(waw  conj.)  and  ending  with  finite  verbs.  The  third  group 
consists  of  three  Hnes  which  average  three  members  each,  the 
first  members  in  every  case  being  introduced  by  the  formula 
''that  saith  of  (or  to)"  {h  na«n),  each  subsequent  member 
being  joined  in  the  preceding  by  '*and  (or  even)"  {waw 
conj.)  and  ending  with  a  finite  verb,  as  in  the  second  group. 
Furthermore  the  second  group  possesses  the  distinctive  feature 
that  in  it  the  "  person  "  of  the  narrative  abruptly  changes, 
Jehovah  instead  of  being  the  speaker  as  m  the  first  and  last 
groups  is  spoken  of  objectively  and  the  third  person  appears 
in  the  three  finite  verbs  of  the  second  members  and  with  special 
prominence  in  the  "his  servant"  (n^lj;)  and  "his  messen- 
gers "  (  1^D«'?D  )  of  the  third  line.  The  reason  for  such  a 
change  will  appear  later. 

If  we  arrange  the  paragraph  according  to  the  scheme  sug- 
gested by  these  outstanding  features  (cf.  Plates  I  and  II)  it 
is  at  once  apparent  that  it  has  two  very  marked  characteristics, 
number  and  climax.  The  poem  consists  of  three  strophes  of 
three  lines  each,  (numerical  feature),  while  the  element  of 
climax  is  obtained  primarily  through  increasing  the  num- 
ber of  members  in  the  lines  of  each  successive  strophe,  the 
first  strophe  having  one-member  lines,  the  second  two-member, 
while  the  third  strophe  averages  three  three-member  lines, 
although  an  extra  climax  is  obtained  by  lengthening  the  last 
line  at  the  expense  of  the  one  which  precedes  it.  In  this  way 
the  two  elements,  number  and  climax,  are  interwoven  (the  cli- 
max involving  the  number  three)  and  the  result  is  a  numerical 
climax.  This  will  be  the  more  apparent  perhaps  if  we  tf^eat 
for  a  moment  the  single  members  as  units,  thus  obtaining  the 
following  numerical  scheme : 

*  Here  as  in  the  Qina  arrangements  words  joined  by  hyphens  are  to 
be  treated  as  having  but  a  single  accent.  An  effort  has  been  made  to 
make  the  translation  exhibit  as  clearly  as  possible  the  metrical  form  of 
the  poem — This  applies  especially  to  the  end-members  of  the  second 
strophe — But  although  in  the  main  the  approximation  is  fairly  close,  a 
perfect  reproduction  is  of  course  unattainable. 

*^  Or  "  its  foundation "  if  "  Temple "  is  as  some  suppose  construed 
here  as  a  feminine  noun.     [These  two  notes  refer  to  Plate  II]. 


2S. 


2  « 
5^ 


fV- 

'  V 

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r 

o 

u 

O 

i; 

n 

n 

r:  \ 

i     1 

if  L. 

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p 

n 

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g 

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S0 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 


mnd  the  second  members  being  joined  to  the  first  by 
(  nj.)  and  ending  with  finite  verbs.     The  thirt 

T.  f  three  lines  which  average  three  mcmlx^rsrc. 

first  members  in  every  case  being  introduced  by  tne  forn 
"that  saith  of  (or  to)"  (h  na«n),  each  subseo/llent  menr 
being  joined   in  the  preceding  by  "and    (or  /ven)"    {iv 
conj.)  and  ending  with  a  finite  verb,  as  in  tM  second  gr< 
Furthermore  the  second  group  possesses  the  distinctive  feat 
that  in  it  the  "  person  "  of  the  narrative  Abruptly  chani 
Jehovah  instead  pf  .being  the  speaker  as /n  the  first  and  1 
groups  is  spoken  of 'objectively  and  th^hird  person  apjx 
in  the  three  finite  verbs  of  the  second  nyHiibers  and  with  s\\ 
prominence  in  the  "  his  servant  "   (TOJ?)   and  ''  his  mes 
gers  "   (  VDKte  )   of  the  third  line/  The  reason  for  su< 
change  will  appear  later. 

If  we  arrange  the  paragraph  according  to  the  scheme 
gested  by  these  outstanding  features  (cf.  Plates  I  and  I 
is  at  once  apparent  that  it  has  iWo  very  marked  character!- 
number  and  climax.     The  l^n  >f  three  strophe 

three  lines  each,   (r.i-^^-^/^   fca.Mvy,   while  the  elemem      . 
climax   is   obtained  y     v   through   increasing  the   nwa- 

l)er  of  members  m  the/ines  of  each  successive  strophe,  ilie 
first  strophe  having  cv-'/"  •  ''^^'''^'-  T:n..c  tv.^  second  two-member 

three-member  lines 
lined  by  lengthening  the 
..   „iiich  precedes  it.     In  this  v;^, 
the  two  and  climax,  are  interwoven  (the  cli 

max  invoivi:  .r  three)  and  the  result  is  a  numerir 

climax.     Thiy  .....  ■,^  .aq  more  apparent  perhaps  if  we  t  ' 
for  a  moment  the  single  members  as  units,  thus  obtaining 
following  mimerical  scheme : 

Here  aS  in  the  Qina  arrangements  words  joined  by  hypb' 
be  treats  as  having  but  a  single  accent     An  effort  has  bee' 
make  the  translation  exhibit  as  clearly  as  possible  the  metrical       ;m  ( 
the  p^m — This   applies   especially  to   the   end-members   of    the    secof 
strotJie — But  although  in  the  main  the  approximation  is  fairly  dose 
:ct  reproduction  is  of  course  unattainable. 

Or   "its    foundation"   if   "Temple"   is   as    some   suppose  const 
as  a  fcininine  noim.     [These  two  notes  refer  to  Plate  ^1] 


the  third   str 
i  an  extra 


n  the /in 

^7 

xtra  Of 


ss; 


n 

•- 

n 

r 

?x 

•^ 

f- 

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n: 

n 

n 

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a 

Jw 

n 

n 

p 

1 

r 

g 

o      a     a 

X  "  ° 

c  n  {: 
ESP 
p      &     ^ 


n  n  n 

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THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  597 

I 

Strophe  I  i 

I 

I  I 

Strophe  II  i  i 

I  I 

III 

Strophe  III  i  i 

I  I  I  I 

The  progressive  climax  is  very  marked  and  is  heightened  by 
the  extra  length  of  the  last  line  of  the  third  strophe.  This 
additional  climax  seems  at  first  sight  considerably  discounted 
by  the  shortness  of  the  second  line  of  the  same  strophe,  which 
is  correspondingly  weaker  than  the  normal  first  line.  But  it 
is  to  be  observed  that  if  the  last  line  is  to  be  strengthened  with- 
out marring  the  numerical  symmetry  of  the  strophe  as  a  whole, 
this  is  the  best  way  in  which  it  can  be  accomplished.^^  That 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  strophe  the  symmetry  is  maintained 
is  clear  when  we  cast  up  the  totals  as  follows : 

Strophe  13  3 

Strophe  II  3    3  6 

Strophe  III         3    3    3  "  9 

Consequently  this  departure  from  an  absolute  uniformity 
which  we  find  in  the  third  strophe  has  this  in  its  favor  at  the 
outset  that  it  does  not  mar  the  numerical  symmetry  of  the 
whole.  And  as  we  will  now  proceed  to  show,  this  seeming 
irregularity  is  the  result  a  second  element  of  climax 
which,  less  perceptible  in  the  first  two  strophes  of  the  poem, 
makes  itself  all  the  more  noticeable  in  the  third. 

We  have  assumed  for  the  purpose  of  clearly  exhibiting  the 
structural  form  of  the  poem  that  the  units  of  which  it  is  made 
up,  the  single  members,  are  uniform  and  have  so  treated  them 

"  That  it  would  be  better  to  weaken  the  second  line  than  the  first  is  clear, 
since  the  first,  as  already  remarked,  gives  the  normal  length  of  a  3rd 
strophe  line, 

^  It  is  certainly  permissable  to  derive  this  3  from  the  2+1  of  the  first 
arrangement  and,  in  any  case,  the  totals  for  the  strophes  show  a  uniform 
increase. 


598  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

in  the  numerical  scheme.  This  is  only  partially  correct. 
Eleven  of  the  eighteen  members  which  constitute  the  poem 
have  three  accents  (three  words )^*  each,  all  of  the  nine  non- 
end-members^'  being  three-accent  members,^^  a  further  appli- 
cation as  it  would  seem  of  the  numerical  (triple)  principle. 
But  there  is  a  variation  in  the  members  of  the  first  strophe  and 
in  the  end-members  of  the  second  which  is  of  great  significance 
for  the  understanding  of  the  variation  in  the  position  of  the 
members  in  the  third  strophe.  This  variation  is  quite  marked 
in  the  first  strophe.  The  three  members,  contain  in  all  nine 
words  (nine  accents)  an  average  of  three  to  a  member  as  in 
the  first  members  of  the  other  two  strophes.  But  instead  of  a 
uniform  triplet  of  three-accent  lines  we  find  a  two-,  a  three-, 
and  a  four-accent  line,  i.  e.,  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of 
uniformity  the  first  member  has  been  shortened  and  the  third 
member  lengthened  to  the  extent  of  an  accent,  so  that  the 
numerical  form  of  the  strophe  counting  accents  only  is  2,  3, 
4,  and  should  we  disregard  the  verb  in  the  count  since  it  is  a 
constant  factor,  i,  2,  3  which  is  the  strophical  climax  in  minia- 
ture. Furthermore  the  length  of  the  last  member  is  increased 
by  the  presence  of  the  article  "  the  earth  "  (  lf^'^7\  )^'^    All  of 

•*We  may  use  accent  and  word  here  interchangeably,  since  there  are 
no  cases  of  double  accent  or  accent  elision  present  in  the  passage. 

"  By  this  is  meant  of  course  members  which  do  not  stand  at  the  end  of 
the  line. 

"  In  strophe  III,  line  3,  member  2,  the  maqqeph  of  the  massoretic  point- 
ing should  be  removed,  the  correct  reading  being  dSe^;  "VPf  ^"^^  instead 
of   vh^\  'VPr?  ~^^\  ^-  ^-^  three  accents,  not  two. 

"  It  cannot  be  argued  that  usage  favors  this,  since  the  concordance 
shows  that  the  article  occurs  with  "heaven"  (D'Diy)  if  anything  more 
frequently  in  proportion  than  with  "earth"  (yiK).  Nor  can  the  pres- 
ence of  the  article  here  be  explained  on  the  basis  of  metrical  consider- 
ations. For  although  the  insertion  of  the  article  before  yiK  makes  it 
possible  for  the  preceding  word  to  be  accented  on  the  ultima  and  avoids 
the  necessity  of  the  throwing  back  of  its  accent  on  to  the  penult,  the 
same  would  apply  to  the  first  line.  And  since  there  the  accent  is  thrown 
back,  the  line  being  made  as  it  seems  as  short  as  possible,  the  inference 
seems  warranted  that  the  adding  of  the  article  in  the  third  line  is  in- 
tended to  produce  the  opposite  effect  namely  to  lengthen  the  line.  Nor 
finally  can  it  be  argued  that  the  purpose  of  the  insertion  of  the  article 
is   to   avoid   the   cacophony   resulting   from    the   coming   together   of   an 


ISAIAH  XLIV  24-28 


The  numerico-climactic 
arrangement  of  the  poem. 


ices    I-will-build-up 


•usalem    she-shall-be-built  and(-of)-the-temple:    thy-foundation-shall-be-laid- 


PLATE  II. 


\\w:?m\^\ 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  599 

wrhich  goes  to  show  that  there  is  a  marked  climax  within  the 
members  of  the  first  strophe  and  a  decided  heightening  at  the 
end.38 

The  same  cHmactic  heightening  in  a  sHghtly  modified  form 
is  characteristic  of  the  end-members^^  of  the  second  strophe. 
The  first  consists  of  two  words  (noun  +  verb,  two  accents), 
the  second  of  two  words  (noun  with  pronominal  suffix  +  verb, 
two  accents),  the  third  of  three  words  (noun  in  stat.  cstr.+ 
noun  with  pronominal  suffix  +  verb,  three  accents).  This 
heightening  seems  on  the  one  hand  closely  parallel  to  that  in 
the  first  strophe  except  that  here  the  second  step  is  only  the 
addition  of  a  pron.  suffix,  an  addition  which  does  not  increase 
the  number  of  accents  in  the  member,  while  in  the  first  strophe 
it  is  a  noun  which  does.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  the  sec- 
ond member  of  the  second  line  is  perceptibly  shorter  than  the 
second  member  of  the  first  line  (not  merely  as  written,  unless 
both  the  vowels  which  are  written  fully  in  the  former  were 
written  defectively,  but  also  as  spoken  it  is  slightly  shorter,  and 
rhythmically  lighter)  while  the  third  line  is  very  considerably 
longer  than  either  of  the  others,  three  quarters  as  long  as  both 
combined.     Thus  we  notice  a  double  climax  in  the  second 

Ayin  and  of  an  Aleph.  For  as  Aleph  and  He  are  both  gutturals  it 
hardly  seems  as  if  the  Wohlklang  would  be  materially  increased  in  this 
way. 

"It  might  even  be  argued  that  it  furnishes  a  clue  to  the  construction 
of  the  poem  as  a  whole,  the  lines  of  the  first  strophe  losing  the  second 

Z    3        3 
members  and  the  lines  of  the  third  receiving  them  thus :    3    3  =  3    3 

3  Z  3  3  3 
But  this  is  perhaps  too  labored  an  explanation  and  it  will  be  shown  pres- 
ently that  this  triple  climax  has  its  basis  in  the  argument  of  the  poem. 

^  The  fact  that  there  is  no  perceptible  climax  in  the  non-end-members  of 
the  second  and  third  strophes — all  have  3  accents  and  the  slight  variation 
in  the  length  of  the  members,  resulting  from  the  difference  in  the  length 
of  the  words  has  no  significance — has  its  natural  explanation  in  the  fact 
that  uniformity  in  these  members  gives  an  element  of  solidarity  to  the 
poem,  which  is  necessary  if  the  climactic  feature  appearing  in  the  end- 
members  is  to  be  properly  appreciated.  It  is  this  uniformity  in  the  non- 
end-members  which  is  calculated  to  call  our  attention  to  the  heightening 
at  work  in  the  end-members,  just  as  the  figures  in  a  bas-relief  are  all  the 
more  striking  because  of  the  solid  background  from  which  they  emerge. 


6oo  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

members  of  this  strophe;  in  the  one  sense  a  progressive  cli- 
max, similar  to  that  in  strophe  I,  even  a  heightened  climax  in 
the  last  line,  (for  while,  as  has  been  indicated,  the  increase  of 
the  second  end-member  over  the  first  is  only  a  pron.  sufiix 
that  of  the  third  over  the  second  is  a  whole  word)  ;  in  the 
other  sense,  not  merely  a  heightened  climax  in  the  third  but 
a  slight  weakening  in  the  second.  Consequently  the  second 
strophe  is  clearly  intermediate  between  the  first  and  the  third. 
It  shows  elements  of  the  uniform  climax  of  strophe  I  and 
at  the  same  time^  prepares  the  way  for  the,  exceptional  climax 
of  strophe  III  whicK  as  has  already  been  pointed  out  is  ob- 
tained through  the  weakening  of  the  second  line  to  allow  for 
the  strengthening  of  the  third.  For  what  in  the  one  takes 
place  in  miniature,  so  to  speak,  within  the  limits  of  the  end- 
members,  appears  in  the  other,  viz.  in  strophe  III  in  a  much 
more  pronounced  form  since  the  second  line  is  weakened  to 
the  extent  of  a  whole  member  and  the  third  strengthened  to 
the  same  extent,  although  the  symmetry  of  the  strophe  viewed 
as  strophe,  i.  e.  its  numerical  value,  remains  the  same. 

That  this  transposition  of  a  whole  member  in  strophe  III 
was  intentional  and  not  accidental  is  clear  not  only  from  the 
facts  just  mentioned,  namely  that  the  symmetry  is  retained  and 
that  this  marked  heightening  in  the  last  strophe  is  the  result  of 
a  heightening  process  at  work  in  the  whole  poem  which,  at  first 
confined  to  the  end-members,  assumes  larger  proportions  in 
the  last  line  of  the  last  strophe,  where  if  anywhere  the  greatest 
climax  might  be  expected,  but  also  from  the  evident  fact  that 
the  end-members  of  strophe  III  were  intended  by  the  poet 
to  be  end-members.  For  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  end- 
members  of  this  strophe  are  all  two-accent  members,  while  all 
the  others  have  three  accents.  Various  explanations  of  this 
fact  may  be  given^^  but   its  meaning  is  evident.     It  tells 

*•  Probably  the  simplest  explanation  is  that  the  writer  has  made  use  of 
the  law  of  catalexis,  for  the  purpose  of  clearly  marking  the  ends  of  these 
lines  (Catalexis  is  by  no  means  rare  in  Hebrew  poetry.  According  to  Ley 
it  is  one  of  the  most  usual  ways  of  indicating  the  end  of  the  strophe. 
Duhm  seems  to  regard  the  Qina  (pentameter)  line  as  catalectic  Hexa- 
meter, but  whether  this  is  actually  or  merely  theoretically  correct  may  be 
questioned.)    A  catalexis  in  the  end-members  of  this  strophe  is  further 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  6oi 

US  that  the  second  member  of  the  second  line  is  an  end-mem- 
ber, i.  e.  finishes  the  line,  but  just  as  clearly  that  the  third 
member  of  the  third  line  does  not  complete  that  line.  It  is 
completed  by  the  fourth  member  which  is  an  end-member. 
In  view  of  these  facts  it  is  impossible  to  assert  that  the  second 
line  is  incomplete  or  that  its  end-member  was  lost  or  ap- 
pended by  mistake  to  the  last  line.  The  one  has  been  in- 
tentionally shortened  through  the  omission  of  a  non-end  mem- 
ber, the  other  intentionally  lengthened  through  the  insertion 
of  the  same  non-end  member*^  with  a  view  to  obtaining  an 
increased  climax  the  elements  of  which  appear  in  the  preced- 
ing strophes. 

The  Argument  of  the  Poem 

If  we  turn  now  from  considering  the  form  of  the  poem  to 
an  examination  of  its  contents,  it  will  be  clear  that  the  form 
(the  numerico-climactic  scheme,  which  we  have  been  discuss- 
ing) not  merely  in  its  more  general  features  but  even  in  its 
minute  details  is  in  harmony  with,  may  even  be  considered 
but  the  outward  expression  of,  the  argument  of  the  poem. 
First  let  us  consider  the  relation  between  the  theme  and  the 
numerical  structure.  The  theme  of  the  poem  is  the  "  Trans- 
cendence of  Jehovah"  (I  am  Jehovah)  as  exhibited  in  the 
catalogue  of  mighty  deeds  recorded  in  the  nine  participial 
clauses  which  immediately  follow.     These  are  arranged  stro- 

favored  by  the  following  considerations.  The  introductory  formula  is 
Pentameter,  i.  e.,  catalectic.  The  initial  declaration  "  I  am  Jehovah " 
(  mri"'  OJN  )  is  two-accent,  so  is  also,  for  reasons  already  given,  the  first 
member  of  the  first  strophe  and  the  same  feature  appears  in  the  first  two 
end-members  of  the  second.  Consequently  uniformity  would  seem  to 
require  that  the  first  end-member  of  the  third  strophe  should  have  but 
two  accents  and,  as  the  heightening  process  has  in  this  strophe  clearly 
exceeded  the  confines  of  the  end-members  being  produced  by  the  trans- 
ference of  a  whole  member  from  the  second  line  to  the  third  and  as  uni- 
formity in  the  end-members  serves  the  important  end  just  alluded  to, 
i.  e.,  of  designating  the  end-members  as  end-members,  the  catalexis,  is 
allowed  to  appear  in  all  three  end-members  of  this  strophe. 

*^This  applies,  of  course,  merely  to  the  form  of  the  poem  and  not  to 
the  argument,  since  from  the  latter  standpoint  one  line  is  as  perfect 
as  the  other. 


6o2  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

phically  and  topically  in  three  groups.  The  first  group 
(strophe  I)  describes  the  work  of  Jehovah  as  creator.  It 
refers  to  events  lying  in  the  past.  The  second  treats  of  the 
attitude  of  Jehovah  toward  the  longings,  the  efforts  and 
the  pretentions  of  mankind  to  discern  the  future,  to  know 
"  the  times  or  the  seasons  which  the  Father  put  in  his  own 
power  '\  The  answer  is  unequivocal — the  future  belongs  to 
God.  He  baffles  every  attempt  to  enter  his  domain  and  covers 
the  intruder  with  confusion.  But  just  because  it  belongs  to 
him,  he  only  can  and  does  reveal  its  secrets  and  also  bring  to 
pass  all  that  he  has  revealed.  As  this  is  what  may  be  called  his 
"  fixed  policy  "  it  is  true  of  the  past  and  future  as  fully  as  of 
the  present.  But  the  reference  to  "  the  servant  "  in  the  last  line 
together  with  the  fact,  which  has  been  already  mentioned, 
that  Jehovah  is  here  referred  to  in  the  third  person,  suggests 
at  least  that  in  it  the  speaker,  who  is  as  we  shall  see  later 
the  prophet,  refers  to  himself,  and  therefore  that  the  refer- 
ence is  more  especially  to  present  time.^^  And  the  position 
of  this  strophe — between  a  clearly  past  and  clearly  future 
strophe — shows  beyond  reasonable  doubt  that  in  the  scheme 
of  the  poem  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  present  strophe.  At 
the  same  time  the  fact  that  it  has  what  we  may  call  a  backward 
and  a  forward  reference,  fits  it  admirably  to  be  the  connecting 
link  between  past  and  future^^  and  to  show  how  closely  and 
intimately  they  are  all  bound  together.  The  third  declares 
his  purpose  to  deliver  his  people  from  captivity  and  to  restore 
them  to  their  own  land,  and  speaks  exclusively  of  the  future. 
These  data  explain  at  once  the  meaning  of  the  number  three  in 
the  metrical  scheme.  We  have  here  no  mysterious  adumbra- 
tion of  the  Trinity,  no  dependence  on  the  "  trilogy  arrange- 
ment "  of  the  Book  of  Consolation,  advocated  by  Delitzsch. 

**  We  must  not,  however,  lay  too  much  stress  upon  the  fact  that  "  ser- 
vant "  is  singular,  since  it  might  be  regarded  as  a  "  defectively  written  " 
plural  (cf.  Cheyne's  arrangement),  although  it  is  much  more  natural  to 
regard  it  a  singular. 

"  The  "  forward  reference "  is  especially  marked,  since  "  the  word  of 
his  servant "  seems  to  find  its  echo  in  the  thrice  repeated  "  that  saith  " 
of  the  third  strophe  and  to  call  attention  at  the  very  outset  to  its  being 
a  prophecy. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  603 

The  number  three  is  clearly  the  three  of  the  ordinary  cate- 
gories of  time — past,  present,  future^* — and  the  prominence 
of  this  number  in  the  scheme  is  due  to  the  prominence  of  the 
chronological  element  in  the  poem  and  is  intended  to  bring 
this  feature  with  unmistakeable  clearness  before  the  mind 
and  eye  of  the  reader. 

But  not  only  does  the  recognition  of  the  chronological  ele- 
ment in  the  poem  at  once  explain  its  numerical  scheme  it 
explains  the  climactic  feature  as  well.  The  reason  is  not  far 
to  seek.  It  lies  in  the  relative  importance  of  these  three  cate- 
gories in  general  and  in  the  special  prominence  of  the  third 
category  in  this  instance.  Of  the  relative  importance  of  these 
categories  to  us  as  individuals  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  speak 
since  it  is  a  fact  of  experience.  The  past  is  important.  It  is 
the  foundation  upon  which  the  present  rests.  But  it  is  past. 
We  cannot  recall  it.  We  cannot  re-live  it.  The  best  that  we 
can  do  is  to  learn  from  it  and  apply  its  lessons  to  the  present 
and  the  future.    It  is  furthermore  an  historic  past  and  though 

**  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  chronological  element  is  recognized 
to  a  considerable  degree  in  the  Peshito  version.  Thus  the  participles  of  the 
first  strophe  are  all  rendered  by  the  finite  verb  in  the  past  tense ;  the  partici- 
ples of  the  second  strophe  by  participles,  but  the  first  two  finite  verbs  by 
presents  (i.  e.,  by  participles  with  appended  enclitic  pronoun)  ;  the  partici- 
ples of  the  third  strophe  by  perfects,  as  if  to  indicate  that  the  decree  is  of 
old,  but  the  imperfect  tenses  with  one  exception  by  the  imperfect  (future). 
It  is  also  interesting  to  observe  in  this  connection  that  in  Jer.  xliv.,  D,  H. 
Miiller  finds  a  poem  in  which  there  is  a  chronological,  but  not  a  climactic 
form.  He  divides  the  chapter  into  three  parallel  columns.  A,  B  and  C,  i.  e., 
verses  2-6,  7-10,  11-14.  Each  of  these  columns  he  arranges  in  strophes  of 
the  form  i  -[-  6  -{-  6,  the  i  being  in  each  case  represented  by  the  introduc- 
tory formula  "  Thus  saith  Jehovah  of  Hosts  ",  etc.,  in  its  varying  forms. 
Whether  this  strophical  scheme  can  be  accepted  does  not  concern  us  par- 
ticularly. It  is  sufficient  to  note  that  in  the  original  the  three  para- 
graphs are  of  nearly  equal  length.  The  important  fact  is  that  he  finds 
these  three  columns  mutually  parallel,  while  at  the  same  time  the  chron- 
ological feature  is  prominent  in  each,  the  first  treating  of  the  past,  the 
second  of  the  present,  (notice  the  prominence  of  the  "and  now"  (nnjfl) 
at  the  beginning  of  verse  7),  the  last  of  the  future.  This  shows  clearly 
that,  as  a  chronological  poem,  the  Cyrus  prophecy  is  not  without  analogy. 
And  even  if  Jer.  xliv.  be  treated  as  simple  prose  (cf.  Kittel's  edition  of  the 
Biblia  Hebraica),  it  is  an  example  of  the  application  of  the  chronological 
method  to  a  carefully  balanced  discourse. 


6o4  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

ofttimes  we  need  guidance  to  read  its  lessons  aright,  it  is  in 
a  sense  an  open  book  accessible  to  all.  For  none  but  beings 
incapable  of  reflection  can  be  conscious  of  no  past.  The  pres- 
ent is  far  more  significant  than  the  past  for  it  is  the  time  of 
action  and  of  actuality.  It  is  truly  but  as  a  narrow  strip  of 
land  between  two  mighty  oceans,  but  it  is  none  the  less  "  the 
accepted  time  ".  The  *'  living  "  of  a  man  is  made  up  of  a 
fleeting  succession  of  "  nows  "  and  they  are  in  a  very  real 
sense  *  all  that  he  has  to  face  eternity  with '.  The  past  is 
mighty  but  it  is  gone  casting  its  mantle  upon  the  shoulders  of 
the  present  and  this  present  is  as  much  mightier  than  the  past 
as  "  a  living  dog  is  mightier  than  a  dead  lion  ".  And  yet  the 
present  is  but  the  threshold  of  the  future — a  future  which 
looms  dim  and  mysterious,  potent  for  weal  or  woe  before 
life's  pilgrim.  We  act  in  the  present  but  for  the  future.  Our 
planning,  hoping,  toiling  is  for  the  future.  And  why?  Be- 
cause we  are  bound  thither  by  the  inexorable  law  of  destiny. 
Even  the  most  thoughtless  is  sobered  by  the  thought  of  this 
"  Great  Unknown  ".  For  though  we  should  strive  to  think 
of  death  as  but  a  sleep,  "  yet  in  that  sleep  of  death,  what 
dreams  may  come  when  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil, 
must  give  us  pause  ".  The  certainty  of  a  future  and  the  un- 
certainty of  the  future  have  tremendous  significance  for  every 
thoughtful  man.  It  is  the  goal  of  the  race  and  of  the  indi- 
vidual. Is  it  any  wonder  then  that  in  every  age,  the  man  who 
by  wisdom  or  cunning,  by  fair  means  or  foul  could  lift  the 
curtain  of  the  future  has  been  held  in  high  esteem?  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  the  office  of  the  Hebrew  prophet  meant  and 
means  to  many  merely  that  of  a  "  predictor  "  ? 

It  is  quite  natural  then  that  the  writer  of  a  chronological 
poem  such  as  we  have  found  this  to  be  should  introduce  the 
element  of  climax  to  show  the  relative  importance  of  these 
three  classes  of  mighty  deeds.  What  we  may  call  the  normal 
value  or  ratio  of  these  three  categories  seems  clearly  given  in 
the  normal  climax  3,  6,  9,  in  which  the  three  strophes  are 
composed  of  one-,  two-,  and  three-member  lines  respectively. 
This  is  the  normal  climax  of  the  poem  and  may  therefore  be 
said  to  represent  the  normal  ratio  between  the  categories  of 
time,  i.  e.  the  ratio,  when  there  is  no  especial  emphasis  on  the 


i 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  605 

events  lying  in  the  different  categories,  these  being  all  of  equal 
intrinsic  importance,  the  emphasis  being  primarily  on  the 
category  to  which  the  events  belong.  Consequently  we  might 
expect  that  the  extraordinary  importance  of  an  event  or 
series  of  events  lying  in  one  of  these  categories  might  be  indi- 
cated by,  and  consequently  inferred  from,  an  extraordinary 
emphasis  upon  it,  or  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
metrical  form,  by  an  extraordinary  climax  at  that  point.  In 
the  metrical  form,  we  have  found  an  additional  climax  within 
the  normal,  a  climactic  process  which  reaches  its  height  in  the 
third  (future)  strophe.  Does  this  as  well  as  the  normal  find 
its  explanation  in  the  argument  of  the  poem  ?  Let  us  examine 
and  see. 

The  first  strophe  has,  as  we  have  seen,  three  single-member 
lines  so  constructed  as  to  produce  a  uniform  climax  of  the 
form  2,  3,  4.  The  theme  is  the  creative  acts  of  Jehovah.  In 
the  first  line  it  is  stated  briefly  and  generally,  "  that  made  all 
(things)"  (  h'2  ntS^J^  ).  In  the  "all"  the  monergism  is  de- 
scribed in  extenso.  In  the  second  the  sphere  is  limited  "  that 
stretched  out  heavens  "  (  D''Dt5^  ntD3 )  ;  and  the  monergism  is 
explicitly  expressed  and  emphasized  by  the  addition  of  the 
word  "  alone  "  or  "  by  myself  "  (''T^^  )  denying  that  he  had  a 
co-worker.  While  in  the  third  line,  which  speaks  with  still 
greater  definiteness  of  "  the  earth  "  (pSH )  the  monergism 
is  declared  in  the  form  of  an  almost  contemptuous  challenge 
"who  was  with  me?"  (  TlS  ''D  )  a  challenge  to  man  to  deny 
that  God  alone  created  this  earth  in  which  he  lives,  to  deny 
that  God  alone  is  great.  In  the  increasing  stress  laid  on  the 
monergism  of  Jehovah  the  theme  of  the  strophe  shows  a 
decided  climax,  together  with,  and  the  importance  of  this  feat- 
ure will  appear  more  clearly  later,  an  element  of  increasing 
definiteness  (all,  heavens,  the  earth). 

The  second  strophe  treats,  with  especial  reference  to  the 
present,  what  we  may  call  the  "  future  problem ",  i.  e.  it 
exposes  the  folly  and  futility  of  man's  efforts  or  pretensions- 
to  discern  the  future  as  contrasted  with  the  certainty  of  divine 
revelation.  Three  instances  likewise  are  cited.  The  first  line 
tells  us  that  Jehovah  "frustrateth  the  signs  of  liars  and 
maketh  diviners  mad  ",  i.  e.  those  who  defy  his  moral  govern- 


6o6  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

ment  and  try  to  discern  the  future  by  unlawful  means  are  con- 
fused and  confounded.  Here  the  thought  of  open  opposition 
is  strong.  In  the  second  line  it  is  less  apparent  and  may  even  be 
said  to  disappear.  **  That  turneth  wise  men  backward  and  their 
knowledge  he  maketh  foolish  ".  "  Those  who  in  their  wisdom 
know  not  God"  their  wisdom  is  deception  and  folly.  There  is 
not  the  same  clearly  marked  opposition  in  case  of  the  "  wise 
men"  (  D^DDH  )  as  in  that  of  the  "liars"  (  D^'ID  )  and  "diviners 
( D'»DDp )  and  they  are  less  severely  dealt  with.  So  this 
second  line  seems  weaker  than  the  first.  Yet  in  another  sense 
there  is  a  slight  advance  corresponding  to  the  slight  advance  in 
metrical  form.  For  while  the  "  wicked  "  of  the  first  line 
seem  to  recognize  supernatural  power  and  agencies  although 
enemies  of  Jehovah,  the  "  wise  men  "  of  the  second  line  ig- 
nore him.  Like  the  "  fool ",  they  have  said  in  their  heart,  "there 
is  no  God  " :  like  the  modern  Positivist  they  have  gotten  beyond 
the  religious  stage,  an  attitude  which  in  some  respects  at 
least  is  even  more  culpable  than  open  opposition."*^  The  third 
line  "  that  confirmeth  the  word  of  his  servant  and  performeth 
the  counsel  of  his  messengers  "  stands  in  contrast  to  the  first 
two,  the  parallelism  being  antithetic.  Jehovah  overcomes  op- 
position. True!  But  he  also  accomplishes  his  purposes. 
What  he  has  declared  or  declares  through  his  servant  and  his 
messengers,  the  prophets,  shall  surely  be  fulfilled.  The  climax 
of  this  line  is  clearly  indicated  by  the  antithesis  and  by  the 
marked  definiteness  produced  by  the  presence  of  the  pronouns, 
"  his  servant  ",  "  his  messengers  ",  as  contrasted  with  the  in- 
definiteness  of  the  first  two  lines.  Thus  the  form  and  argu- 
ment of  this  strophe  are  in  entire  harmony,  there  being  in 
both  a  marked  climax  in  the  third  line,  and  the  second  in  the 
argument  as  well  as  in  the  metrical  form  being  both  stronger 
and  weaker  than  the  first. 

The  third  strophe  treats  of  the  release  and  restoration.  The 
first  line  is  a  general  prophecy — Jerusalem  shall  be  again  in- 
habited, the  cities  of  Judah  rebuilt  and  their  desolation  come 
to  an  end.  It  is  general  and  we  may  say  corresponds  more 
^That  "wise"  and  "knowledge"  must  have  this  significance  is  clear. 
For  it  is  only  a  knowledge  which  leaves  God  out  of  acount  which  is 
condemned  in  Scripture.  True  wisdom  is  not  only  a  priceless  jewel,  but 
it  is  also  only  to  be  obtained  from  God. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  607 

nearly  to  what  we  might  a  priori  regard  as  the  prophetic  hori- 
zon of  one  who  foresaw  the  exile  as  a  certainty  (xxxix.  5),  the 
fall  of  Babylon  as  well  (xiii-xiv),  and  who  like  Paul  was  sure 
that  "God  had  not  cast  off  his  people"  (cf.  xxxv.) 
than  does  the  allusion  to  Cyrus  in  the  last  line.  It  speaks  of 
the  future  in  general  terms  and  in  a  general  way.  The 
second  line  in  what  is  probably  its  primary  reference  is  even 
less  definite  and  distinctly  figurative.  The  reference  to  the 
"  Deep"  {rhr^)  seems  to  refer  back  to  the  Red  Sea  and  to 
the  wonders  of  the  Exodus  and  to  declare  that  this  deliverance 
will  be  analogous  to  that  other,  which  marked  such  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  God's  people.*^  It  is  possible,  however,  that  this 
figurative  explanation  of  the  word  "  Deep  "  does  not  exhaust 
its  meaning.  While  the  view  that  it  referred  to  the  divert- 
ing of  the  Euphrates  from  its  natural  channel  by  Cyrus  in 
order  to  make  possible  the  capture  of  Babylon  (Herodotus) 
can  hardly  be  regarded  as  tenable  at  any  rate  in  its  older 
form  in  view  of  the  cuneiform  records  which  have  come  to 
light  and  indicate  that  Babylon,  i.  e.,  the  city  proper,  offered  no 
resistance  to  Cyrus's  army,  there  are  fairly  clear  indications 
that  Babylon  is  here  referred  to,  the  chief  difficulty  being  to  de- 
termine the  degree  of  definiteness  which  is  to  be  assigned  to 
the  allusion.^''    The  third  and  last  line  marks  a  decided  advance 

"  Such  an  interpretation  is  favored  by  Jeremiah's  words  in  xxiii.  7- 

8.  To  the  returning  exiles,  this  restoration  shall  mean  more  than  the 
other.    Thus  interpreted,  this  line  is  less  definite  than  the  preceding. 

"  This  reference  may  be  of  a  two-fold  character.  It  may  refer  primarily 
(a)  to  the  geographical  location  of  Babylon.  This  is  favored  by  Isaiah 
xxi.  I  where  the  judgment  upon  Babylon  is  introduced  by  the  words, 
"  Burden  of  a  desert  sea  ".    That  Babylon  is  intended  is  clear  from  verse 

9,  and  it  is  highly  probable  that  we  are  justified  (cf.  Bredenkamp,  Nagels- 
bach  and  Delitzsch)  in  connecting  this  enigmatical  phrase  with  the  name 
of  "  Southern  Babylonia  "  mat  tamlim,  i.  e.  "  land  of  the  sea  "  (cf.,  e.  g., 
the  Bab.  Chronicle  Col.  11  line  8).  Just  how  much  of  Babylonia  could  be 
called  "  mat  tdmtim  ",  at  this  time  it  would  probably  be  impossible  to  say. 
But  that,  as  a  general  and  more  or  less  poetic  designation  it  might  well 
have  been  applied  to  Babylonia  as  a  whole  or  to  the  city  of  Babylon  is  by 
no  means  improbable.  The  fact  that  Merodach  Baladan,  who,  at  the  time 
at  which  he  sent  an  embassy  to  Hezekiah,  was  king  of  Babylon,  was  orig- 
inally king  of  the  sea-lands  {mat  tdmtim)  and  that  the  Chaldean  dynasty, 
to  which  Nebuchadnezzar,  the  conqueror  of  Jerusalem,  belonged  came  from 


6o8  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

over  the  first,  probably  also  over  the  second,  and  this  advance  is 
in  respect  of  definiteness,  for  it  connects  the  indefinite  prophecy 
of  line  one,  together  with  its  continuation  in  line  two,  with  the 
person  of  him  who  shall  fulfil  the  same — Cyrus.    Through  the 

Chaldea,  i.  e.  from  the  sea-lands,  makes  such  an  allusion  here  and  in  xxi.  i, 
very  appropriate.  Franz  Delitzsch,  furthermore,  found  "  desert  sea  ",  an 
especially  apt  description  of  the  location  of  the  city  itself.  "  The  elevation 
on  which  Babylon  stands  is  a  "  Midhbar  ",  a  great  plain  which  loses  itself 
to  the  S.  W.  in  Arabia  Deserta  and  is  cut  up  to  such  an  extent  by 
the  Euphrates  as  well  as  by  swamps  and  lakes  that  it  swims  as  if  in  a 
sea."  There  may  be  further  (b)  an  allusion  to^the  fact  that  the  Babylon- 
ians took  advantagie  of  these  physical  conditions  to  make  their  city,  Baby- 
lon, secure  from  attack,  much  as  centuries  later  did  the  Low  Countries  in 
their  struggle  with  Spain.  Thus  Nebuchadnezzar  II,  in  the  so-called  "  East 
India  House  Inscription  ",  in  recording  the  mighty  fortifications  which  he 
built  tells  us  (Col.  vi.  39-46)  "that  no  desperate  (Id  bdbil  panim,  "no 
respector  of  persons  ",  Delitzsch)  foe  threaten  the  walls  (sides)  of  Baby- 
lon, with  mighty  waters  like  the  expanse  of  the  sea,  did  I  surround  the 
land,  to  cross  which  is  like  the  crossing  of  the  billowy  sea,  the  great  (?) 
salt  (?  or  bitter)  sea  {ia-ar-ri  ma-ar-ti)".  (Cf.  Winckler's  translation  in 
the  Keilschriftliche  Bihliothek).  The  exact  meaning  of  the  last  two  words 
is  uncertain,  Friedrich  Delitzsch  seeks  to  explain  "  larru"  through  the 
Hebrew  -)«'•  (river),  which  is  applied  to  the  Nile  and  thinks  "  martu" 
may  be  for  "  marratu"  (bitter),  cf.  ndr  marratu,  the  name  of  the  northern 
end  of  the  Persian  Gulf.  At  any  rate,  it  is  clear  that  Nebuchadnezzar 
aimed  to  render  Babylon  impregnable  by  means  of  an  artificial  lake  or 
something  of  the  sort.  We  know  also  that  more  than  a  century  earlier 
Merodach  Baladan  sought  ineffectually  to  defend  Dur-Athara  against 
Sargon  by  piercing  'the  dyke  (?)  of  the  river  (canal?)  Surappi '  and 
placing  the  surrounding  district  under  water,  cf.  further,  the  account  of  the 
defense  of  Bit  Jakin  by  the  same  monarch  (Winckler's  Sargon).  A  refer- 
ence to  a  recognized  method  of  fortifying  or  defending  cities  in  Baby- 
lonia would  be  very  appropriate  in  a  passage  where  the  fall  of  Babylon  and 
the  triumph  of  Jehovah's  shepherd  is  predicted,  and  the  sense  of  the  pas- 
sage would  be  that  all  the  defenses  of  Babylon,  whether  natural  or  arti- 
ficial, would  be  unable  to  check  the  victorious  advance  of  the  invader  and 
we  have  reason  to  believe  that  Babylon  with  the  exception  of  the  citadel 
passed  without  bloodshed  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy. 

If  there  were  here  a  direct  reference  to  Nebuchadnezzar's  fortifications, 
this  second  line  would  mark  in  definiteness  a  very  decided  advance  upon 
the  preceding.  It  seems  more  probable,  however,  that  the  reference  is 
much  more  general,  and  it  must  be  left  an  open  question  whether  Babylon 
is  referred  to  at  all,  save  in  so  far  as  Babylon  was  a  second  Egypt  and 
the  restoration  a  second  Exodus. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  609 

mention  of  his  name  as  Jehovah's  shepherd,  the  one  who  shall 
perform  all  his  pleasure,  the  predicted  restoration  assumes 
definite  shape.  The  element  of  climax  is  found  in  the  first  part 
of  the  line,  in  the  mention  of  Cyrus,  for  the  last  two  members 
of  the  line  as  a  matter  of  fact  only  repeat  in  a  slightly  more 
definite  form  the  prophecy  of  the  first  line.  We  have  seen 
that  Cheyne,  Marti  and  others  regard  the  third  member  of 
this  line  as  a  corrupt  repetition  of  the  first  member  of  the  first 
line  and  in  a  sense  they  are  right.  It  is  a  repetition  but  not 
a  corruption.  The  first  line  is  a  prophecy  of  the  restoration 
without  reference  to  the  release,  the  second  of  the  release 
without  reference  to  the  restoration.  The  third  line  discloses 
the  name  of  him  who  shall  both  release  and  restore,  who  shall 
fulfil  Jehovah's  pleasure  even  to  the  extent  of  restoring  his 
people  to  their  land  and  sanctioning  the  rebuilding  of  the 
Temple.  In  form  the  last  line  is  longer  than  the  first,  nearly 
as  long  indeed  as  both  of  the  lines  which  precede  it  taken  to- 
gether (it  has  four  members  and  the  other  two  but  five).  In 
argument  it  repeats  the  first,  involves  the  second,  and  intro- 
duces an  element  of  definiteness  which  is  probably  only  dimly 
and  at  any  rate  figuratively  hinted  at  in  the  second.  The 
reference  to  Cyrus  is  consequently  the  climactic  element  in  this 
line.  It  is  the  mention  of  his  name  and  the  declaring  that 
he  is  the  deliverer  which  is  significant  and  which  forms  the 
climax  of  the  line,  of  the  strophe  and  of  the  poem. 

Jehovah  and  Cyrus.  This  is  in  a  word  the  argument  of  the 
poem  and  its  structure  shows  us  clearly  the  estimate  which 
we  are  to  form  regarding  Cyrus  and  his  mission.  It  makes 
clear  to  us  at  once  his  greatness  and  his  littleness.  Great- 
ness: He  is  Jehovah's  shepherd,  Jehovah  sends  him  to 
perform  his  will.  Jehovah  heralds  his  coming  as  the 
deliverer  of  his  people  and  in  xlv.  i  he  gives  to  him  that 
name  which  is  to  be  borne  by  a  greater  than  he,  one  of 
whom  he  is  but  a  feeble  type,  who-  shall  deliver  Israel 
from  a  more  grievous  bondage  than  that  of  Babylon  and 
shall  fulfil  Jehovah's  pleasure  not  only  for  the  chosen  people 
but  for  the  whole  world.  Cyrus,  his  name,  marks  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  epoch  in  history.  And  the  progressive  climax 
of  this  poem  exhibits  admirably  the  significance  of  Cyrus 


6io  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

and  his  mission.  Littleness:  This  utterance  and  the  eight 
which  precede  it,  however  important  they  may  be  in  themselves, 
are  primarily  but  illustrations  and  proofs  of  the  transcendent 
greatness  of  Jehovah,  of  the  supereminence  of  him  who  in- 
habiteth  eternity  and  before  whom  the  vast  universe,  past, 
present  and  future,  is  an  open  book,  to  whom  "a  day  is  as  a 
thousand  years  and  a  thousand  years  as  one  day  ",  to  whom 
"  the  nations  are  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance  ",  and  who 
"  doeth  according  to  his  will  in  the  army  of  heaven  and  among 
the  inhabitants  of  the  earth,  and  none  can  stay  his  hand  or 
say  unto  him,  what  doest  thou?".  He  is* Jehovah  and  beside 
him  there  is  none  else  and  men  and  empires,  Cyrus,  Babylon 
and  Israel  are  but  his  agents,  his  instruments,  pensioners  upon 
his  bounty,  creatures  of  his  hand  and  he  hath  created  them  for 
his  glory.  Consequently  the  poem  may  better  be  called :  "  The 
Poem  of  the  Transcendence  of  Jehovah  "  than  the  "  Cyrus 
Poem  "  or  the  "  Cyrus  Prophecy  ".  It  contains,  it  is  true,  a 
part  of  the  Cyrus  prophecy,  a  great  and  glorious  declaration  of 
singular  intrinsic  importance,  but  the  form  of  the  poem  makes 
it  clear  that  this  prophecy  is  recorded  primarily  only  as  a  unique 
proof  of  the  incomparable  greatness  of  him  who  uttered  it 
through  his  servant.  And  it  is  only  as  we  keep  the  logical  and 
poetical  form  of  this  declaration  clearly  in  view  that  we  are 
able  to  appreciate  its  beauty  or  fully  comprehend  its  meaning. 

As  a  result,  therefore,  of  our  examination  of  this  passage  we 
find  not  only  a  metrical  scheme  which  shows  exceptional  evi- 
dences of  design,  but  one  which  gives  every  indication  of  being 
but  the  metrical  expression  of  the  theme  of  the  poem.  For  the 
poem  despite  the  intricacy  of  its  form  cannot  be  considered 
artificial  since  it  is  not  forced  into  the  scheme,  but  as  we  have 
argued  at  length,  is  itself  the  basis  of  the  scheme.  A  more 
perfect  correspondence  it  were  hard  to  find  and  this  corres- 
pondence should  be  in  itself  a  sufficiently  conclusive  proof  that 
the  arrangement  proposed  is  the  true  one.  For,  be  it  re- 
membered, the  metrical  structure  has  been  explained  and  the 
correspondence  between  form  and  argument  exhibited  without 
the  altering  of  a  single  consonant  of  the  Hebrew  Text.  It 
would  be  hard  to  find  stronger  proof,  that,  to  borrow  the 
words  of  Budde,  this  arrangement  is  *  the  one  intended  by  the 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  6ll 

poet '  and  that  in  arranging  the  poem  according  to  this  scheme 
me  have  merely  '  restored  it  to  its  rights '.  That,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  Qina  arrangement  was  not  intended  is  clear 
from  the  fact  that  the  "  corruptions  of  the  text  ",  the  presence 
of  which  the  advocates  of  this  arrangement  must  recognize  if 
they  would  account  for  the  imperfections  of  their  poem,  not 
only  occur  exactly  where  we  should  expect  a  priori  to  find  them 
were  the  attempt  made  to  alter,  or  we  may  now  venture  to  say 
"  force  "  the  poem  into  the  Qina  mould,  but  furthermore  are 
most  naturally  explained,  we  may  even  say,  can  only  be  ade- 
quately explained,  as  having  their  origin  in  this  "  forcing  " 
since  these  alterations  are  in  the  main  neither  based  upon  nor 
supported  by  the  witness  of  the  versions. 

In  proof  of  this  statement  let  us  look  again  for  a  moment  at 
the  scheme  on  Plates  I.  and  II,  and  compare  it  with  those  of 
Budde  and  Cheyne.  The  introductory  line  is  pentameter 
(Qina),  as  are  also  the  first  two  lines  of  the  second  strophe. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  last  two  members  of  the  first  line  of  the 
third  strophe,  and  of  its  second  line,  while  the  last  line  falls 
apart  readily  into  two  Qina  lines.^^  But  what  is  to  be  done  with 
the  initial  declaration  ''  I  am  Jehovah  "  (niH''  ''::i«  ),  with  the 
three  single-member  lines  of  strophe  I,  with  the  extra  accent  in 
the  second  member  of  the  third  line  of  strophe  II,  and  with  the 
first  member  of  strophe  III  line  i.  Here  is  where  according 
to  our  arrangement  a  Qinaizing  of  the  poem  would  come  to 
grief  and  here  is  exactly  where  the  advocates  of  that  arrange- 
ment find  the  original  Qina  poem  mutilated.  This  residuum 
is  relatively  small.  But  it  stubbornly  refuses  to  be  Qinaized. 
Could  stronger  proof  be  found  in  support  of  the  statement 
made  after  discussing  the  Qina  arrangement  that  the  presence 
of  a  number  of  Qina  lines  can  be  recognized  without  the 
inference  being  necessary  that  the  poem  as  a  whole  is  Qina? 

*"  'van  Sdi  may,  since  the  first  word  is  monosyllabic,  be  readily  included 
under  a  single  accent  the  more  readily  since  the  first  word  is  in  the  con- 
struct state.  The  maqqeph  shows  that  the  Massorites  pronounced  them  as 
one.  The  general  rule  is,  however,  according  to  Sievers,  that  the  nomen 
regens  retains  its  accent  and,  although  he  regards  the  loss  of  the  accent 
under  these  circumstances  as  perfectly  proper,  he  seems  to  consider  it  the 
exception  (cf.  Sievers,  Hebrdische  Metrik,  §§  158,  2;  160.) 


6i2  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

Such  an  inference  is  on  the  contrary  opposed  by  the  minority 
of  non-Qina  Hnes  and  it  is  only  when  they  have  been  "  si- 
lenced "  that  a  unanimous  verdict  is  possible.  And  further- 
more, we  have  seen  that  the  metrical  form  of  the  poem — its 
numerico-climactic  arrangement — is  derived  from  the  chrono- 
logico-climactic  form  of  the  argument.  And  it  needs  but  a 
moment's  reflection  to  convince  the  reader  that  such  an  utter- 
ance as  this  could  not  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case  find  expres- 
sion in  Qina-verse.  The  metrical  form  of  any  poem  should  be 
in  harmony  with^and  should  serve  to  exhibit  and  even  to  rein- 
force the  theme  or  argument.  This  requirement  is  fulfilled 
in  the  case  of  our  poem  by  the  numerico-climactic  arrange- 
ment to  a  remarkable  degree.  We  have  seen  that  the 
theme  of  the  poem  is  the  "  Transcendence  of  Jehovah  "  as 
it  is  tersely  expressed  in  the  words  "  I  am  Jehovah  "  (n"\tV  *'D3fc<) 
and  that  all  the  rest  significant  as  it  may  be  in  itself  derives  its 
true  significance  from  its  immediate  dependence  upon  these 
potent  words.  In  the  Qina  arrangement,  on  the  other  hand, 
these  words  which  should  stand  out  conspicuously  and  instantly 
attract  our  attention  lose  their  commanding  place  and  become 
part  of  a  line  and  a  mutilated  or  at  any  rate  imperfect  line  at 
that  (cf.  Budde's  arrangement,  also  that  of  Cheyne)  and  the 
immediate  dependence  of  the  participles  upon  them  is  very  ser- 
iously obscured.  While,  as  far  as  the  relation  of  the  nine  utter- 
ances one  to  another,  which  as  has  been  shown  is  exceedingly 
important,  is  concerned,  this  arrangement  fails  to  indicate  or 
.recognize  that  they  are  not  of  equal  length,  but  constructed 
with  a  view  to  a  carefully  planned  climax  and  through  the  at- 
tempt to  make  them  uniformly  symmetrical  the  significance  of 
the  closing  declaration  is  greatly  impaired.  Indeed  through  the 
attempt  to  arrange  these  verses  in  the  Qina  form  the  force  of 
the  argument  is  nearly  as  seriously  impaired  as  is  the  symmetry 
of  the  poem. 

Budde  in  the  article  already  cited  (page  588)  disclaimed  any 
desire  to  force  matters.  He  claimed  that  his  method  was  ob- 
jective based  on  the  examination  of  the  text  and  that  he  would 
follow  the  method  should  it  overthrow  his  whole  theory.*® 

**Comhill,  in  his  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament  (English  edition, 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  613 

We  do  not  wish  to  question  his  entire  sincerity  in  affirming  this 
but  rather  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  his  method,  a 
method  which  has  gained  very  wide  acceptance,  is  neither  so 
objective  nor  so  certain  as  he  believed.  The  reason  is  simply 
that  he  and  others  who  follow  the  same  method  have  shown 
themselves  too  ready  to  jump  at  conclusions,  if  we  may  be 
pardoned  for  using  so  blunt  an  expression.  They  have  found 
here  a  passage  which  contains  a  number  of  pentameter  lines 
and  they  have  concluded  that  it  must  have  been  a  Qina  poem 
and  that  the  non-Qina  element  therein  contained  is  to  be 
attributed  to  textual  corruption.  Had  they  however  attached 
more  significance  to  this  minority  of  "  irregular  lines  "  they 
might  have  perceived  that  it  is  the  seeming  irregularities  in 
this  poem  as  Qina  which  show  that  it  is  not  Qina.  As  long 
as  the  irregularities  are  allowed  to  stand,  the  possibility  is 
always  present  that  an  arrangement  may  be  found  that  will 
as  we  have  seen  explain  them.  As  soon  as  the  critic  resorts 
to  textual  emendation,  the  irregularities  are  forced  into  con- 
formity and  the  dissenting  voice  is  hushed.  These  scholars 
aimed  to  "  heal  "  a  mutilated  Qina  poem.  They  have  in- 
stead mutilated  a  perfect  poem  of  another  form.  Why? 
Because  they  have  failed  to  understand  the  two  cardinal  fea- 
tures of  the  poem,  number  and  climax.  In  so  far  as  number 
figures  at  all  in  their  arrangement  it  is  the  number  "  five  "  in- 
volved in  the  3  -f-  2  =  5  of  the  Qina  form,  and  in  the  dividing 
of  the  10  lines  of  the  "  restored  "  poem  (cf.  Cheyne,  Duhm  and 
Marti)  into  two  strophes  of  five  lines  each,^^  and  not  the  num- 

1907),  in  discussing  Hebrew  Metrics  (p.  21)  says:  "The  importance 
of  Budde's  work,  Das  hebrdische  Klagelied  (ZATW.  ii.  i  ff.,  1882),  lies  in 
his  application  of  strictly  scientific  method." 

**  While  Isaiah  xliv.  24,-xlv.  7  is  frequently  arranged  in  a  series  of 
five-line  strophes,  i.  e.  four  five-line  strophes  and  a  four-line  strophe 
(Marti  thinks  five-line  strophes  were  originally  intended),  it  does  not  ap- 
pear that  the  number  "  five  "  has  any  such  special  significance  in  their  eyes 
as  the  number  "three"  in  our  arrangement.  D.  H.  Muller,  who,  as  we 
have  seen,  refuses  to  recognize  metrical  arrangement  not  even  the  Qina 
measure,  in  the  prophetic  books,  and  lays  the  prime  emphasis  on  the  strophe 
and  a  strophe,  in  which  number  figures  largely,  regards  the  four-line 
strophe  as  the  first  of  a  descending  series,  which  is  in  turn  followed  by 
two  four-line  strophes.     His  strophical  scheme  for  xliv.  24-xlv.  13  is  A 


6i4  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

ber  "  three  "  which  as  we  have  seen  is  not  only  fundamental  in 
the  form  but  also  has  its  origin  in  the  chronological  presenta- 
tion of  the  theme.  While  furthemiore  the  form  of  the  Qina 
verse  being  characterized  by  balance  and  uniformity  allows  no 
place  for  a  climactic  development. 

The  Purity  of  the  Text. 

In  view  of  the  conjectures  or  claims  of  the  "  interpolation- 
ists  "  and  "  metricists  "  that  this  passage  is  more  or  less  cor- 
rupt; the  claim  6f  the  one  group  that  at  least  the  word  Cyrus 
must  be  a  later  insertion,  the  claim  of  the  other  that  although 
it  is  genuine  there  are  other  indications  of  corruption  as  shown 
by  the  irregularity  of  the  Qina  poem,  we  may  well  lay  special 
emphasis  upon  the  fact  already  alluded  to  that,  in  the  arrange- 
ment we  have  proposed  it  is  not  necessary  to  alter  a  single  con- 
sonant of  the  Hebrew  Text  in  order  to  obtain  a  beautifully 

(5  +  5  +  5+5) +B  (4  +  3  +  2+ I) +  C  (4  +  4),  (N.  B.,  he  omits  the 
last  half  of  verse  28  in  his  count)  in  which  the  letters  indicate  the  columns, 
or,  we  may  say,  parallel  paragraphs  and  the  numbers  the  strophes  with  the 
number  of  lines  contained  in  each.  To  discuss  his  method  fully  would 
take  too  much  space.  It  is  remarkable  that  he  is  able  to  develop  such  a 
symmetrical  strophical  arrangement  along  with  an  irregular  and  metreless 
line.  Should  his  results  gain  acceptance,  they  would  lead  almost  inevitably 
to  the  conclusion  that  a  strophe  based  on  the  three  elements,  Responsio, 
Concatenatio  and  Inclusio,  as  he  calls  the  forms  of  thought  and  word 
parallelism,  which,  in  his  opinion,  determine  the  strophical  arrangement 
and  not  a  metrical  line,  as  is  claimed  by  Budde,  Sievers  and  others,  lies  at 
the  basis  of  the  poetry  of  the  prophets.  That  Muller's  theory  of  the  stro- 
phe is  not  without  foundation  in  fact  is  shown  by  the  prominence  of  stro- 
phical form — strophical  parallelism — in  such  a  passage  as  Amos  i.  i-ii.  6, 
where  the  recurring  words,  "I  will  cast  fire  upon"  and  "thus  saith 
Jehovah",  together  with  the  parallelism  in  structure  between  the  succes- 
sive strophes,  makes  the  recognition  of  strophical  form  unavoidable.  That, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  irregular  length  of  his  line  which  cannot  be 
avoided,  if  the  correspondence  in  form  and  length  between  strophe  and 
strophe  is  to  be  maintained  is  a  serious  objection  to  his  method  cannot 
be  denied.  It  is  probable  that  there  is  a  golden  mean  somewhere  between 
the  two  positions  and  that  the  relative  significance  of  metre  and  strophe 
is  not  fixed,  but  varies  with  poem  and  poet,  and  while  an  overemphasis 
on  strophe  leads  Miiller  to  mutilate  lines  and  ignore  metre,  it  is  equally 
possible,  as  we  have  seen,  to  mutilate  lines  through  a  too  great  or  mistaken 
emphasis  on  metrical  form. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  615 

symmetrical  poem  and  one  which  at  every  step  shows  unmis- 
takeable  evidence  of  design.  We  may  go  a  step  further  and  as- 
sert that  it  is  practically  impossible  to  alter  this  poem  without 
marring  it  and  that  when  the  true  form  of  the  poem  is  recog- 
nized it  becomes  at  once  a  most  conclusive  argument  not  merely 
for  the  integrity  of  the  reference  to  Cyrus,  which  as  we  have 
seen  forms  the  climax  of  the  poem  and  explains  the  carefully 
inwrought  double  climax,  but  also  for  the  integrity  of  the 
passage  as  a  whole.  This  proof  of  the  integrity  of  the  poem  is 
of  especial  importance  not  only  in  view  of  the  repeated  claims 
that  it  is  corrupt,  but  also  in  view  of  its  testimony  to  the  care 
with  which  the  sacred  record  was  treasured  and  preserved  by 
the  Jews. 

When  we  consider  the  intricate  structure  of  this  poem  and 
the  difficulties  which  confront  the  commentator  or  metricist, 
who  attempts  to  explain  it  unless  he  understands  its  metrical 
form,  when  we  observe  the  comparative  ease  with  which  some 
of  these  difficulties  could  be  removed  and  are  as  a  matter  of 
fact  removed  by  some  critics,  and  finally  when  we  recognize  the 
fact  that  the  Versions  indicate  clearly  that  the  structure  of  the 
poem  was  forgotten  (?)  at  a  very  early  date,^^  it  is  significant 
and  noteworthy  that  this  is  the  case.  Thus  when  the  strophical 
arrangement  is  not  recognized  the  change  of  persons  which  we 
find  in  the  second  strophe  is  not  readily  explainable^^  and  might 

"  The  connecting  in  the  LXX.  of  the  words  "  who  was  with  me " 
("J^K  "P),  which  stand  at  the  end  of  the  last  line  of  the  first  strophe,  with 
the  first  word  of  the  second  strophe,  as  indicated  by  the  rendering,  "  who 
else  will  confound  the  signs  of  ventriloquists  "  (T£s  irepos  diaaxeddffei  k.  t.  X.) 
together  with  several  other  data  of  varying  importance  shows  clearly  that 
chose  who  translated  this  passage  into  Greek  were  ignorant  of  the  metri- 
cal form  and  we  have  no  data  on  which  to  base  the  assertion  that  this 
feature  was  ever  clearly  recognized  by  the  Jewish  church.  The  main 
reason  for  supposing  that  it  never  was  recognized  is  the  fact  that  if  once 
clearly  recognized  it  would  not  readily  be  forgotten  cf.  pg.  632. 

"An  abrupt  change  of  person  is  not,  of  course,  in  itself  of  especial 
significance,  cf.,  e.  g.,  Ps.  Ixxxi.,  Ixxxix.  and  xci.  But  in  a  poem,  which 
is  so  clearly  a  logical  unit  as  this  one,  and  in  which  the  development  of  the 
argument  is,  in  its  main  features  at  least,  so  simple  and  clear,  this  sudden 
change  is  very  difficult  to  understand,  unless  it  is  intended,  as  we  have 
argued,  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  this  strophe  is  a  present  strophe.  It  is 
interesting  to  observe  in  this  connection,  that  change  of  person  is  of 


6i6  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

easily  be  regarded  as  indicating  a  corrupt  text.  How  easy  it 
would  be  to  substitute  the  first  person  for  the  third,  as  is  done 
in  the  Peshito  in  its  rendering  of  the  first  two  lines  of  the 
strophe!  Further  the  "even  saying"  (nDW*?!)  of  the  third 
member  of  strophe  III,  line  3;  what  student  of  Isaiah  has 
not  wrestled  with  it!  How  natural  it  would  be  to  change  it 
into  "  that  saith  "  (nD«n),  following  the  analogy  of  the  three 
"  that  saiths  ",  which  precede,  a  change  which  would  be  sup- 
ported by  both  the  LXX  and  the  Vulgate,  but  one  which  would 
do  more  to  mar  v  the  symmetry  of  the  poem  than  any  other 
change  of  like  simplicity,  which  could  be  suggested.  And  final- 
ly it  is  to  be  noted  that  in  the  last  line  of  the  first  strophe  the 
reading  of  the  Text  (Kthibh)  "  who  was  with  me  "  ( "'ri«  •'D  ) 
is  more  correct  than  the  reading  preferred  by  the  Massorites 
(Qre)  "  by  myself  "  (''f^^?),  (although  the  latter  has  the  sup- 
port of  the  Peshito  version,  and  of  the  Targum)  since,  as  has 
been  shown,  the  structure  of  the  poem  requires  here  two  words 
instead  of  one  if  the  necessary  total  of  nine  accents  is  to  be 
obtained.  It  would  have  been  exceedingly  easy  for  them  to 
justify  such  a  slight  change  as  this,^^  a  change  which  does  not 

frequent  occurrence  in  Babylonian  private  letters,  both  of  the  early  and 
late  periods.  Landersdorfer  (Altbab.  Privatbriefe,  S.  19)  has  called  at- 
tention to  this  phenomenon  as  a  probable  explanation  of  the  changes 
which  we  find  in  the  dialogue  between  Jacob  and  Esau  (Gen.  xxxiii.  5  ff.). 
He  regards  it,  however,  as  a  colloquialism  and  such  is  probably  the  true 
explanation.  Consequently  it  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  explaining  the 
variation  in  a  finished  literary  product  like  the  poem  under  discussion. 

"  In  view  of  the  fact  that  there  is  no  absolute  rule  governing  the  writing 
or  the  omission  of  the  w  and  y  when  they  are  merely  vowel-letters  and 
consequently  not  an  indispensable  feature  of  the  Mossoretic  Text,  it  will 
not  do  for  us  to  attach  much  significance  to  this  fact.  Still  it  is  worthy 
of  note  that,  in  the  Kthibh,  the  Massorites  have  preserved  for  us  a  reading, 
a  scriptio  plena,  which  supports  the  view  that  two  words  were  intended 
instead  of  one,  although  they  themselves  preferred  the  scriptio  defectiva.- 
It  may,  however,  be  remarked  in  this  connection,  that  the  "  defective 
writing",  "T^i^O  would  not  necessarily  establish  the  correctness  of  the 
reading  "alone"  although  it  would  undoubtedly  favor  it.  For  in 
Numb,  xxiii.  10  the  LXX.  rendering  makes  it  not  improbable  that  "iflDD 
(read  "^SDD  "number"  by  the  Massorites)  is  merely  a  peculiar  way  of 
writing  *^3D  'D  "who  can  count?",  the  'P  being  written  defectively  and 
like  the  inseparable  prepositions  prefixed  to  the  following  word. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  617 

affect  the  consonantal  text.  But  they  preferred  to  keep  it  just 
as  it  was  and  merely  indicated  by  means  of  the  marginal  read- 
ing (Qre)  their  preference  for  the  other  reading.  Such  facts 
as  these  are  in  entire  accord  with  the  view  that  the  text  of  the 
Old  Testament  was  very  carefully  preserved  and  guarded  by 
the  Jews,  to  whom  were  committed  the  Oracles  of  God,  but  ut- 
terly opposed  to  the  view  of  which  we  hear  so  much  nowadays 
to  the  effect  that  it  is  very  unreliable  and  has  been  so  altered 
and  revised  and  redacted  as  to  make  it  often  impossible  to 
ascertain  its  original  form  with  any  degree  of  certainty. 

Climax  as  a  Feature  of  Hebrew  Poetry 

It  was  stated  above  that  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  failure 
of  the  "  metricists  "  to  recognize  the  true  form  of  this  poem  is 
to  be  found  in  their  failure  to  appreciate  the  all-important 
climactic  feature.  It  will  be  well  for  us  at  this  point  to  devote 
a  few  paragraphs  to  the  consideration  and  investigation  of  the 
role  played  by  ''  climax  "  in  Hebrew  poetry.  Such  an  inves- 
tigation is  important  and  even  necessary  because  of  the  fact 
that  climax  is  practically  ignored  by  students  of  Hebrew 
metres.  Inequality  in  verse  length  is  often  regarded  as  an  in- 
dication of  a  corrupt  text^^  and  in  the  elaborate  treatise  of 
Prof.  Sievers,  which  has  been  referred  to,  we  have  failed  to 
find  any  reference  to  climax  as  a  legitimate  feature  of  Hebrew 
poetry.  That  it  is  rarely  found  we  are  prepared  to  admit.  But 
if  it  can  be  shown  as  we  believe  it  can  that  metrical  climax  de- 
spite its  rarity  is  a  recognized  feature  of  Hebrew  poetry,  we 
will  not  only  call  attention  to  a  feature,  which  is  as  beautiful 
as  it  is  rare,  but  we  will  at  the  same  time  find  confirmation  of 
our  claim  that  this  rare  feature  is  to  be  found  and  to  be  found 
in  singular  perfection  in  the  passage  we  have  been  investigat- 
ing.   And  finally  as  will  appear  later  a  thorough  understanding 

"  We  have  seen  that  the  extra  length  of  the  second  member  of  the  third 
line  of  strophe  II  is  regarded  by  the  advocates  of  the  Qina  form  as  an 
indication  of  corruption  and  they  reduce  the  length  of  the  line  from  three 
words  to  two  for  the  sake  of  uniformity,  failing  to  recognize  the  marked 
climax  in  the  form  and  argument  at  this  stage  of  the  poem  (cf.  Roth- 
stein,  Grundsiige  des  Hebr.  Rhythmus,  S.  62  u  66.) 


6i8  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

of  this  feature  is  of  especial  importance  to  us  because  of  its 
bearing  upon  the  problem  of  the  date  of  the  poem. 

That  the  element  of  climax  in  Hebrew  poetry  is  not  promi- 
nent and  receives  little  or  no  attention  is  not  remarkable  in 
view  of  the  exceptional  prominence  of  its  opposite,  balance  or 
parallelism.  Whether  this  parallelism  has  to  do  primarily  with 
form,  or  with  thought,  whether  it  be  a  sound-  (alliter- 
ation or  rhythm),  word-,  member-,  or  line-parallelism  or  bal- 
ance it  is  undeniable  that  this  element  is  fundamental  not 
merely  in  Hebrew  poetry  but  in  one  form  or  another  in  poetry 
in  general.  Now  it  is  at  once  apparent  that  in  a  rigid  paral- 
lelismus  membrorum,  where  there  is  a  perfect  balance  of 
thought  and  metrical  form,  the  element  of  climax,  as  a  prin- 
ciple of  prog^ress  or  unbalance  is  excluded.  Just  in  the  propor- 
tion that  the  lines  or  members  are  unequal,  is  the  parallelism 
or  balance  imperfect.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this  parallelism  is 
rarely  so  rigidly  enforced  as  to  exclude  all  climax  or  progress. 
It  is  generally  recognized  that  the  parallelism  in  thought  may 
be  "  cumulative  "  (climactic)  or  antithetic  as  well  as  synony- 
mous and  instances  could  be  easily  cited.  Examples  of  climax 
in  form  are  hard  to  find.  A  fine  specimen  however  is  found  in 
the  Levitical  Blessing  (Numbers  vi;  23b-25)  for  which  Kit- 
tel  gives  the  following  metrical  arrangement : 

Jehovah  bless-thee  and-keep-thee 

Jehovah  make-shine  his-face  upon-thee  and-favor-thee 

Jehovah  lift-up  his-face  upon-thee  and-establish    for-thee    peace." 

Form  and  argument  do  not  correspond  perfectly,  it  is  true, 
since  grammatically  the  "  upon  thee  "  (  T'^S  )  of  line  two  be- 
longs as  much  to  the  first  member,  as  does  the  same  word  in 
line  three.  But  allowing  for  this  slight  poetic  license,  the  poem 
metrically  considered  shows  a  uniform  numerical  climax  of  the 
following  form : 

II  I  2+ 1=3 

III  II  or  3-4-2  =  5 
I     I     I     I       III                       4+3=7 

an  accent  being  added  to  each  member  of  each  line  as  the 
Q}hvf  i"?  QV)       ySn  vjs  nin^  hv 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  619 

poem  progresses,  while  on  the  other  hand  the  parallelism  in 
form  is  sufficiently  maintained  to  satisfy  the  poetical  require- 
ment and  the  "  progressive  "  parallelism  in  thought  is  very 
marked.  Another,  though  less  clearly  marked,  example  of 
climax  in  form  is  the  Blessing  of  Noah,  Gen.  ix.  25-27  (cf. 
Kittel).  The  thought-parallelism  is  very  carefully  main- 
tained. Each  line  begins  with  a  curse,  or  a  blessing  (anti- 
thetic parallelism)  and  ends  with  a  reference  to  Canaan  as 
the  "servant"  (synonymous  parallelism).  There  is  also  a 
play  upon  words  in  the  "  God  of  Shem "  (  U^  TI^X ) 
of  the  second  line  and  the  "  in  the  tents  of  Shem  "  (''^n«a 
Oty)  of  the  third.  And  in  the  metrical  form  a  climax  sug- 
gested by  and  involved  in  the  theme  seems  clearly  present,  the 
three  lines  being  a  hexameter,  octameter  and  decameter  re- 
spectively, of  the  form: 

2+2+2=6 

4  +  4  =8 

3  +  3  +  4=10 
Thus  metrically  considered  the  last  line  is  equal  to  the  first 
plus  one  half  of  the  second. 

A  climax  of  this  kind  affects,  mars  we  may  say,  the  paral- 
lelism to  a  considerable  extent  and  it  is  evident  that  the  more 
marked  the  climax  the  weaker  will  be  of  necessity  the  paral- 
lelism. An  element  of  climax  may,  however,  be  introduced  in 
another  way  without  marring  this  parallelism,  viz.  through  the 
use  of  double  parallelism  or  what  may  be  called  a  parallelism 
of  two  dimensions  (vertical  and  horizontal),  the  element  of 
climax  being  confined  to  one  dimension.  Instances  of  double 
parallelism  are  easily  found.  Psalm  xix.  7  is  a  good  ex- 
ample :^^ 

"  The  Law  of  Jehovah  is  perfect  converting  the  soul 

The  Testimonies  of  Jehovah  are  sure      making  wise  the  simple."" 

Here  the  double  parallelism  is  easily  recognized.  Not  only  is 
there  a  marked  parallelism  between  the  two  lines  as  a  whole 

"  Budde  points  out  that  the  second  half  of  this  psalm  is  a  poem  in  which 
the  Qina  form  is  most  generally  recognized. 

"  A  similar  double  parallelism  is  found  in  the  "  Levitical  Blessing  ",  but 
it  was  the  prominence  of  the  climactic  feature  which  made  it  a  suitable 
illustration  of  climax  in  metrical  form  at  that  point  of  the  argument. 


r 


620  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

and  between  their  respective  members,  a  vertical  parallelism, 
but  there  is  also  a  parallelism,  less  complete  it  is  true,  since 
the  second  members  have  only  two  accents  and  are  gram- 
matically dependent  upon  and  epexegetical  of  the  first  mem- 
bers, between  the  first  and  second  members  of  each  line, 
(what  we  call  in  contrast  to  the  vertical  a  horizontal  paral- 
lelism). This  horizontal  parallelism  is  less  perfect  as  a  rule 
than  the  vertical.  The  second  member  may  be  as  in  the  in- 
stance just  cited  entirely  dependent  on  the  first  and  merely 
supplement  it,  or  the  two  members  may  be  clauses,  one  inde- 
pendent, the  other  dependent.    E.  g. 

"  Except  Jehovah  build  the  house     they  labor  in  vain  that  build  it 

"  Except  Jehovah  keep  the  city  the  watchman  waketh  but  in  vain. "" 

Or  the  second  member  may  continue  and  be  coordinate  with 
the  first  or  finally  it  may  be  entirely  independent  of  and  in 
as  perfect  parallelism  with  the  first  member  as  is  the  one 
line  with  the  other,  i.  e.  the  horizontal  parallelism  may  be  as 
perfect  as  the  vertical.  Cf .  Ps.  xviii.  25-26  (=  2  Sam.  xxii. 
26-27.) 

With  the-merciful  thou- wilt-  With-a-man  of-uprightness 

show-thyself-merciful  thou-wilt-show-thyself-upright 

With  the-pure  thou-wilt-show-  And-with  the-froward  thou- 
thysel  f -pure  wilt-sho  w-thysel  f  -  f  roward." 

Here  the  two  members  of  the  first  line  are  entirely  coordinate 
and  the  parallelism  is  perfect  while  the  members  of  the  sec- 
ond line  are  merely  joined  by  "  and  ".  As  far  as  the  form 
is  concerned  we  might  regard  them  as  four  trimeter  lines 
(a  single  parallelism)  and  could  arrange  them  in  almost  any 
order  we  might  choose  preferably  as  here  in  two  hexameter 
lines  (a  double  parallelism),  since  it  is  undoubtedly  true  as 
Grimme  asserts  that  the  shorter  a  line,  the  more  likely  is  it 
to  combine  with  another  to  form  a  "  long  line  "  e.  g.  two 
trimeters  to  form  a  hexameter,  etc.     But  at  the  same  time 

"This  poem  Ley  describes  as  distichal  hexameter,  i.  e.,  a  poem  with 
two  lines  to  the  strophe,  the  lines  consisting  of  two  members  with 
three  accents  each.  Metrically  the  second  members  are  equal  to  the  first 
and  grammatically  the  first  members  are  dependent  on  the  second. 

"Ley  calls  it  " tetrastichal  hexameter",  i.  e.,  hexameter  with  four 
lines  to  the  strophe. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  621 

Grimme  recognizes  trimeter  as  perfectly  legitimate  and  it  is 
interesting  to  recall  in  this  connection  that  Cheyne  prefers  to 
treat  the  first  three  lines  of  Budde's  Qina  poem,  i.  e.  Isaiah 
xliv.  23  as  consisting  of  six  short  lines  rather  than  of  three 
long  lines  (pentameter)  beginning  the  Qina  poem  at  verse  24. 
These  examples  suffice  to  make  it  clear  that  while  double 
parallelism  is  not  merely  theoretically  possible  in  Hebrew 
poetry  but  of  very  frequent  occurrence  the  horizontal  paral- 
lelism is  easily  and  we  may  say  usually  subordinated  to  the 
vertical,  examples  of  perfect  double  parallelism  being  rare. 
Now  if  the  vertical  parallelism  is  the  more  fundamental  and 
significant  and  the  horizontal  less  essential  it  is  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  latter  parallelism  would  lend  itself  more 
readily  and  fully  to  the  exhibition  of  the  climactic  principle 
than  the  former.  We  have  seen  that  as  far  as  form  is  con- 
cerned the  four  parallel  members  of  Psalm  xviii.  25,  26  could 
be  arranged  in  any  order  we  might  select.  Were  there  for 
example  six  members  and  did  the  grammatical  construction 
or  the  argument  favor  it  we  would  be  justified  in  arranging 
them  in  the  following  order : 

I 

I  I 

I  I  I 

i.  e.  a  trimeter,  a  hexameter,  and  a  nonameter  or  as  Ley  called 
the  latter  "  a  lengthened  hexameter  ",  i.  e.  we  could,  provided 
there  were  a  sufficient  reason  for  so  doing,  arrange  the  units 
according  to  a  climactic,  as  well  as  according  to  a  uniform 
scheme  such  as  three  hexameter,  or  six  trimeter  lines  would 
be.  And  in  this  way  a  horizontal  climax  in  form  would  be 
obtained  without  aflfecting  the  vertical.  For  if  all  the  mem- 
bers were  equal  and  parallel  as  we  assume  them  to  be,  the  three 
first-members  and  the  two  second-members  would  stand  in  as 
perfect  parallelism  one  with  another  as  if  the  scheme  were  uni- 
form. This  is  as  we  have  seen  the  method  by  which  the  normal 
climax  is  obtained  in  our  poem. 

Thus  it  is  clear  that  there  are  two  distinct  methods  by  which 
climax  can  be  introduced  into  Hebrew  poetry,  the  one  ac- 
complishes it  through  increasing  the  length  of  the  verse  7nem- 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

bers,  thus  affecting  the  vertical  parallelism,  the  parallelism  of 
the  corresponding  members  in  successive  lines — what  we  call 
vertical  climax®^' — the  other  or  horizonal  climax  through  in- 
creasing their  number  without  affecting  their  equality  one 
with  another.  Of  the  former  we  have  cited  an  example  in 
the  "  Levitical  Blessing "  which  while  embodying  a  double 
parallelism  limits  the  climax  to  the  vertical  all  the  lines  being 
two-member  lines.  In  discussing  the  latter  we  have  called  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  a  double  parallelism  such  as  we  find  in 
Psalm  xviii.  25-26  might  readily  admit  of  or  even  require  a 
climactic  grouping,  instead  of  a  uniform'pairing  of  its  mem- 
bers and  that  just  such  a  grouping  occurs  in  our  poem  and  we 
may  add  occurs  in  such  a  form  as  to  make  any  other  arrange- 
ment of  these  units  than  the  climactic  impossible.^^  This  hori- 
zontal climax  is  as  has  been  said  the  normal  and  fundamental 
climax  in  the  structure  of  the  poem.  But  we  have  found  also 
an  additional  or  extraordinary  climax  of  a  dual  nature,  a  verti- 
cal climax  which  affects  the  members  of  the  first  strophe  and 
the  end-members  of  the  second  and  which  prepares  the  way  for 
and  passes  over  into  a  horizontal  climax  in  the  third  line  of  the 
third  strophe,  thus  producing  a  double  horizontal  climax  in  the 
last  line  of  the  f>oem.  Hence  it  is  clear  that'both  of  the  forms  of 
climax  which  we  have  recognized  as  possible  in  Hebrew  poetry 
appear  in  this  poem.  Each  is  grounded  in  the  argument  of  the 
poem,  the  one  in  its  chronological  presentation,  which  gives 
rise  to  the  "triple"  scheme  and  to  the  uniform  (i,  2,  3) 
climactic  development,  the  other  in  the  especial  importance  of 
the  declaration  of  the  last  line  of  the  "  future  "  strophe.  The 
great  task  in  the  constructing  of  this  poem  was  the  working 

**The  reader  will  doubtless  observe  that  there  is  a  slight  inaptness  in 
speaking  of  this  as  a  vertical  climax.  For  in  that  it  produces  an  increase 
in  the  length  of  the  line,  it  certainly  looks  like  a  horizontal  climax.  But  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  it  is  a  climax  which  is,  as  has  been  said,  confined 
within  the  limits  of  members  standing  in  vertical  parallelism  to  one  another 
and  affects,  we  may  say,  weakens,  this  parallelism  just  in  the  measure 
that  it  is  itself  prominent,  the  designation  has  its  obvious  advantages. 

•^The  fact  that  the  first  member  of  each  line  is  introduced  by  a  participle, 
directly  dependent  upon  the  declaration  "  I  am  Jehovah "  and  that  the 
succeeding  members  of  each  line  are  connected  with  the  preceding  by 
"and  (or  even)",  precludes,  as  we  have  seen,  the  possibility  of  any  other 
arrangement  of  the  strophes. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  623 

out  of  this  double  climax,  the  superimposing  of  a  second  hori- 
zontal climax  upon  the  first  in  the  last  line  of  the  poem,  in 
order  to  obtain  at  that  point  a  maximum  of  climax.  How  to 
accomplish  this  without  marring  the  symmetry  was  the  most 
difficult  problem  in  the  technique  of  the  poem.  It  was  solved, 
as  we  have  seen,  by  introducing  the  element  of  vertical  climax 
into  the  first  two  strophes  and  thereby  preparing  the  way  for 
this  additional  horizontal  climax  in  the  third,  and  also  by  mak- 
ing the  second  member  of  the  second  line  of  the  second  strophe 
by  reason  of  its  peculiar  intermediate  character  (we  have 
shown  that  it  is  both  stronger  and  weaker  than  the  correspond- 
ing member  of  the  preceding  line)  prepare  for  the  marked 
weakening  of  the  second  line  of  the  third  strophe,  which  alone 
could  make  possible  an  extra  climax  of  this  kind  in  the  third 
line.  The  more  we  study  the  poem  the  more  are  we  impressed 
with  the  rare  skill  with  which  this  problem  has  been  solved. 
The  maximum  climax  is  obtained  viz.  a  double  climax  in  the 
last  line  of  the  third  strophe.  It  is  obtained  without  affecting 
the  numerical  symmetry.  And  indeed  the  symmetry  of  the 
poem  as  a  whole  is  not  only  preserved  in  a  remarkable  way, 
but  may  even  be  said  to  be  in  a  sense  increased.  For,  although 
from  the  standpoint  of  an  absolutely  uniform  climax,  this 
second  climax  introduces  an  element  of  irregularity  into  the 
first,  the  two  are  at  the  same  time  so  skilfully  combined,  the 
second  climax  so  perfectly  inwrought  into  the  structure  of  the 
first  that  the  beauty  of  the  poem  as  a  whole  is  very  greatly 
increased,  its  very  intricacy  lending  to  it  an  added  charm. 

The  Date 

The  Poem  of  the  Transcendence  of  Jehovah  God  of  Israel, 
as  we  have  called  these  verses,  may  well,  in  view  of  its  beauti- 
fully symmetrical  form  and  of  the  elaborate  care  and  skill 
with  which  a  climax  of  an  unusually  pronounced  character 
has  been  introduced  into  it,  lay  claim  to  a  unique  place  in  the 
poetical  literature  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  did  our  investi- 
gation yield  no  further  fruits  than  the  recognition  of  the  true 
form  of  the  poem  and  the  consequent  proof  of  the  unity  and 
integrity  of  the  passage  it  would  not  have  been  in  vain.     But 


624  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

the  recognition  of  the  true  form  of  the  poem  is  also  of  im- 
portance because  of  the  bearing  which  it  has  on  the  question 
of  its  date  and  authorship.  We  have  seen  that  there  is  a 
double  climax  in  the  poem  and  that  this  climax  in  form  has  its 
counterpart  in  the  argument  which  reaches  its  climax  in  the 
mention  of  Cyrus.  The  mention  of  Cyrus  as  the  restorer  is 
the  reason  for  this  whole  elaborate  scheme.  But  this  at  once 
raises  the  question:  Why  is  this  reference  to  Cyrus  of  so 
exceptional  significance  that  the  writer  feels  it  incumbent  upon 
him  to  use  every  possible  means  to  throw  it  into  bold  relief? 
The  answer  to  this  question  is  to  be  found  either  in  the  in- 
trinsic importance  of  the  utterance  itself  or  in  the  exceptional 
circumstances  under  which  it  was  made  or  in  both  combined. 
The  first  of  these  hardly  needs  to  be  discussed  since,  as  has 
been  already  remarked,  the  importance  of  the  part  played  by 
Cyrus  in  the  history  of  the  Jewish  nation  and  in  the  history 
of  the  world  must  be  apparent  to  every  one.  And  the  mere 
mention  of  Cyrus  in  a  passage  of  this  kind  is  in  and  of  itself 
of  great  significance  and  may  therefore  be  regarded  as  a 
climactic  element  per  se.  It  is  the  second,  therefore,  with 
which  we  are  chiefly  concerned,  namely:  Were  the  circum- 
stances under  which  this  utterance  was  made  of  significance, 
and,  if  so,  why? 

There  are,  as  we  have  seen,  two  principal  views  regarding 
the  date  of  the  poem,  viz.  the  Isaianic  and  the  exilic.  ^^  Let 
us  see  how  well  each  is  calculated  to  explain  its  unique  fea- 
tures. According  to  the  Deutero-Isaianic  hypothesis,  this  pas- 
sage was  written  during  the  exile  and  probably  toward  its 
close,  i.  e.  at  a  time  when  Cyrus  had  already  appeared  upon 
the  stage  of  history  and  had  kindled  the  imagination  of  the 
then  world  through  his  splendid  record  of  unbroken  victory 
and  conquest.  Were  he  not  already  present  and  crowned  with 
success  by  Jehovah,  "  a  great  part  of  chapters  40-48  '*  would, 
we  are  told,  be  "  unintelligible  ".^^    It  was  his  glorious  career 

"The  Interpolation  hypothesis  may  be  included  in  these  two,  since,  ac- 
cording to  its  advocates,  we  may  regard  it  as  an  interpolated  Isaianic 
poem,  i.  e.,  an  exilic  redaction  of  an  Isaianic  poem.  The  question  is  then, 
is  it  essentially  Isaianic  or  exilic?    Which  element  predominates? 

"Cf.  statement  to  this  effect  by  G.  A.  Smith  which  was  quoted  at  the 
beginning  of  this  article. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  625 

which  drew  the  attention  of  the  prophet  to  him  and  led  him 
to  see  in  Cyrus  the  realization  of  Jehovah's  promises,  the 
fulfilment  of  past  prophecies  and  the  guarantee  of  the  speedy- 
fulfilment  of  the  promise  of  restoration;  i.  e.,  Cyrus  was  a 
contemporary  of  the  prophet,  he  was  the  realization  of  past 
promises  and  the  Restoration  though  still  future  was  immi- 
nent. According  to  the  other  view,  the  Exile  and  the  Restor- 
ation both  lie  in  a  distant  future,  and  Cyrus  belongs  to  a  gen- 
eration yet  unborn.  Which  of  these  views,  we  must  now  ask 
ourselves,  is  in  accord  with  and  favored  by  the  form  of  the 
poem  itself? 

In  our  study  of  the  poem  it  has  been  shown  that  the  scheme 
is  fundamentally  chronological  and  climactic  and  that  the 
argument  and  the  metrical  form  are  in  as  perfect  agreement 
as  possible,  the  whole  arrangement  being  intended  to  produce 
an  especial  climax  in  the  closing  line  of  the  third,  or  future, 
strophe.  Three  features  which  have  been  already  alluded  to 
will  help  us  to  answer  the  question  with  regard  to  the  exact 
nature  of  and  reason  for  this  climax. 

The  first  of  these  features  is  the  abrupt  change  of  person 
throughout  the  second  strophe.  We  have  argued  that  the 
position  of  this  strophe  between  a  clearly  past  and  a  clearly 
future  strophe  together  with  the  present  reference  in  the 
"  his  servant ",  designates  this  strophe  a  present  strophe. 
The  change  in  person,  shows  further,  that  it  is  not  merely  a 
present  strophe,  as  a  literary  product,  but  that  it  gives  the 
actual  historic  present  of  the  prophetic  writer,  and,  therefore, 
within  certain  limits,  the  date  of  the  -poem.  For  it  is  signi- 
ficant that,  while  in  the  past  and  future  strophes  Jehovah 
himself  speaks  through  the  lips  of  his  prophet,  in  the  present 
strophe  it  is  the  prophet  who  speaks  as  Jehovah's  representative 
and  declares  what  he  knows  of  the  dealings  of  Jehovah  with  his 
creatures.  Regarding  a  remote  past  and  regarding  the  future, 
whether  a  distant  future  or  one  less  remote,  he  cannot  himself 
bear  any  personal  testimony.  He  can  only  speak  as  Jehovah 
gives  him  utterance  and  can  only  declare  Jehovah's  words.  But 
of  the  present  he  can  speak  and  tell  what  he  has  himself  ex- 
perienced and  knows  to  be  true.  The  change  in  person  can 
only  mean  a  change  of  speaker  and  the  speaker  in  the  second 


626  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

strophe  is  clearly  the  prophet.  That  Jehovah  speaks  in  the  first 
and  last  strophes  and  the  prophet  only  in  the  middle  or  present 
strophe,  shows  that  the  prophet  is  speaking  of  a  period  of  which 
he  is,  as  has  been  said,  fully  comi^etent  to  speak  and  this  is 
clearly  the  present.  For  past,  or  at  any  rate  so  remote  a  past,  as 
is  here  referred  to,  and  future  belong  to  God.  This  is  an  ade- 
quate, perhaps  the  only  adequate,  explanation  of  the  change 
in  person.  It  is  to  be  noted  furthermore  that  in  this  strophe 
there  is  no  allusion  to  the  Exile  or  to  Cyrus.  This  is  reserved 
for  the  third  and  future  strophe  in  which  Jehovah  speaks. 

The  second  feature  is  the  chronologrcal  perspective,  as 
shown  in  the  relation  existing  between  this  present  strophe  and 
the  past  and  future  strophes.  The  past  strophe  refers  to  a 
remote  past,  creation.  This  is  significant  when  we  consider 
how  appropriate  an  allusion  to  a  less  remote  past  would  have 
been.  The  Exodus  would  have  furnished  an  admirable  back- 
ground for  a  prediction  of  this  Second  Exodus.^^  But  the 
prophet  does  not  avail  himself  of  this  attractive  parallel. 
Similarly  a  far  more  recent  event,  an  event  which  must  have 
made  an  indelible  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  contem- 
poraries of  Isaiah  and  their  immediate  descendents,  the 
discomfiture  of  Sennacherib's  army  and  the  deliverance  from 
the  dread  Assyrian,  would  have  prepared  the  way  admirably 
for  a  declaration  that  Jehovah  would  deliver  his  people  from 
the  thraldom  of  Babylon.  Instead  a  remote  past  is  cited,  a 
past  which  marks  the  beginning  of  time,  a  past  of  which 
Jehovah  alone  is  qualified  to  speak.  It  might  be  argued  that 
this  is  accidental  or  unintentional.  But  such  an  explanation 
is  hardly  in  accord  with  the  indications  of  design  which  meet 
us  everywhere  in  this  remarkable  passage.  If  it  was  inten- 
tional what  does  it  indicate?  It  gives  us  clearly  an  insight 
into  and  a  scale  by  which  to  measure  the  chronological  per- 
spective. We  have  the  three  periods  in  the  three  strophes. 
But  one  would  naturally  ask,  what  is  the  distance  between 
them?  The  third  strophe  is  future,  but  what  future?  Are 
the  events  described  near  or  remote?    By  carefully  regulating 

•*It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  thought  of  the  Restoration  as  a 
second  Exodus  is  present  to  the  mind  of  the  writer  in  the  second  line  of 
the  future  strophe. 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  627 

the  interval  between  the  past  and  the  present  strophes,  it 
would  be  possible,  in  a  poem  as  nicely  constructed  as  this  one 
to  give  the  reader  some  idea  at  least  of  the  interval  which 
must  be  hypothecated  between  the  present  and  the  future 
strophes.  That  the  measurement  would  have  to  be  exact,  need 
not  be  assumed.  It  would  suffice  if  the  interval  between  the 
past  and  the  present  served  to  call  attention  to  that  between 
the  present  and  the  future  and  furnished,  at  the  same  time,  an 
analogy  for  the  estimating  of  the  latter.  The  past  is  a  re- 
mote past,  it  is  the  most  remote  past,  creation.  The  future  is 
by  inference  a  remote  future.  It  does  not  lie  at  the  threshold, 
it  lies  afar  off  and  of  it  as  of  this  distant  past  only  Jehovah  can 
speak.  This  view  is  further  favored  by  the  indefiniteness  of 
the  first  two  of  the  future  utterances.  It  is  only  in  the  last  line 
that  the  prophecy  becomes  markedly  definite  and  the  whole 
form  of  the  poem,  as  has  been  pointed  out  is  calculated  to  make 
it  clear  that  this  concluding  declaration  is  very  exceptional, 
very  unusual,  an  utterance  which  must  be  made  as  striking  as 
possible. 

The  third  feature  is  the  element  of  progressive  definiteness 
which  is  present  in  the  poem.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  in 
the  first  two  strophes  it  is  the  increasing  definiteness  of  the 
utterances  fully  as  much  as  their  increasing  significance  which 
constitutes  the  element  of  climax  in  these  strophes.  This  cli- 
max in  the  argument  has  its  counterpart  in  the  vertical  or  in- 
tramembral  climax  in  the  metrical  form  of  the  poem,  and  since 
in  the  last  strophe  this  vertical  climax  passes  over  into  the 
horizontal  with  a  view  to  obtaining  a  heightened  climax,  we 
are  justified  in  supposing  that  since  the  element  of  definiteness 
is  a  characteristic  of  this  climax  in  the  first  two  strophes  it 
will  be  increasingly  prominent  in  the  last  strophe.  And  it 
is  clear  that,  as  has  been  already  pointed  out,  the  climax  of  the 
last  line  of  the  third  strophe  is  essentially  a  climax  of  definite- 
ness, the  indefinite  utterances  of  the  first  two  lines  being  in  the 
last  line  connected  with  the  name  of  Cyrus  and  thereby  given 
definite  shape.  Consequently  since  this  extra  climax  in  the 
metrical  form  shows  that  this  declaration  is  of  extraordinary 
significance  and  since  the  form  of  the  argument  shows  that  this 
climax  is  essentially  a  climax  of  definiteness  and  finally  since 


6a8  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

the  definiteness  of  the  utterance  would,  as  all  must  admit,  be 
unique  and  remarkable  in  proportion  to  its  antiquity,  to  the 
depth  of  its  prophetic  perspective,  we  are  justified  in  asserting 
that  this  feature  of  the  poem  favors  its  early  date. 

Thus  we  conclude  that  the  most  striking  and  significant 
features  of  the  poem  favor  the  view  that  while  this  utterance 
was  significant  in  and  of  itself,  it  was  chiefly  significant  in 
view  of  the  exceptional  circumstance  under  which  it  was 
spoken,  i.  e.  in  view  of  its  early  date.  The  chronological  ar- 
rangement of  the  poem  assigns  the  Restoration  and  Cyrus  to 
the  future.  The  perspective  of  the  poen:^  together  with  the 
abrupt  change  of  person  in  the  second  strophe  argues  that  this 
future  is  a  remote  future.  And  finally  the  carefully  con- 
structed double  climax  attaches  a  significance  to  the  definite- 
ness of  the  utterance  which  is  most  easily  accounted  for  if 
this  future  was  so  remote  that  a  definite  disclosure  concerning 
it  would  be  of  extraordinary  importance. 

On  the  supposition  that  the  poem  is  exilic  we  should,  on  the 
other  hand,  expect  Cyrus  to  appear  in  the  second,  the  present 
strophe,  since  according  to  this  view  he  was  "  already  em- 
barked upon  his  career  of  conquest '',  while  the  third  strophe 
should  connect  his  name  with  the  destiny  of  the  chosen  people 
since  the  prophet  saw  in  him  the  promised  champion  of  his 
oppressed  nation.  And  if,  as  we  are  told,  the  overthrow  of 
Babylon  was  imminent  and  was  so  conceived  of  by  the  prophet, 
the  long  interval  between  the  past  and  present  strophes  in  a 
poem  where  the  chronological  element  is  so  pronounced  is  as 
poorly  calculated  as  possible  to  call  attention  to  this  fact.  As 
we  have  seen,  the  form  of  the  poem  is  intended  to  throw  into 
bold  relief  the  unique  features  of  the  prophecy.  If  the 
prophecy  is  not  unique,  if  the  future  is  not  a  remote  future  and 
if  the  definite  allusion  to  Cyrus  is  not  especially  remarkable,  we 
are  at  a  loss  to  explain  the  fact  that  the  utterance  is  cast  in 
so  striking  a  metrical  form.  In  an  exilic  poem  such  a  care- 
fully wrought  out  chronological  climax  is  an  anomaly.  But  if 
we  have  here  a  prophecy  which  in  its  perspective  and  in  its 
definiteness  is  singularly  unique,  the  unique  features  of  the 
poem,  upon  which  we  have  laid  so  much  stress,  are  at  once  ex- 
plained.    They  have  their  origin  in  the  uniqueness  of  the 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  629 

prophecy  and  are  intended  to  exhibit  and  emphasize  this 
uniqueness.  The  numerico-chronological  scheme,  the  normal 
and  the  exception  cHmax,  all  the  peculiarities  of  this  poem,  are 
readily  understood  as  the  appropriate  setting  of  a  strikingly 
unique  prophecy.  If  the  utterance  is  not  particularly  unique 
and  if  there  is  no  special  emphasis  upon  a  distant  future,  how 
are  we  to  explain  this  strikingly  unique  arrangement?  We 
have  seen  that  it  is  impossible,  if  justice  is  done  to  the  plain 
declarations  of  Scripture,  to  limit  the  prophetic  horizon  of  the 
prophet  Isaiah  to  the  preexilic  period  and  that  consequently  the 
most  important  argument  in  favor  of  late  date  is  the  claim 
that  the  utterance  itself  shows  unmistakable  indications  of  ex- 
ilic authorship,  and  we  argue  that  when  the  form  of  the  poem 
is  recognized,  there  is  every  reason  to  assign  it  to  a  pre- 
exilic prophet,  to  Isaiah,  since  the  form  of  the  poem  is  ad- 
mirably calculated  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  Cyrus  and  the 
Restoration  belong  to  a  distant  future  and  to  make  it  clear 
that  it  is  just  because  of  this  fact  that  the  definiteness  of  the 
prophecy,  the  mention  of  Cyrus  by  name,  is  so  remarkable  and 
of  such  unique  significance. 

The  statement  is  frequently  made  that  the  religious  value  of 
the  second  part  of  Isaiah  is  unaffected  by  the  question  of  its 
date  and  authorship.  ^^  This  depends  entirely  upon  what  is 
understood  by  the  words  "  religious  value  ".  If,  for  example, 
the  religious  value  of  our  poem  is  to  be  determined  in  whole 
or  in  part  by  the  revelation  which  it  makes  concerning  the 
wondrous  attributes  of  the  God  of  Israel  (the  theme  is  as  we 
have  seen  "  The  Transcendence  of  Jehovah ",  a  religious 
theme  par  excellence)  and  if  the  attribute  of  foreknowledge 
is  a  distinctively  divine  attribute — this  attribute  is,  be  it  ob- 
served, frequently  alluded  to  by  the  prophet,  who  considers 
the  ability  of  Jehovah  to  predict  and  fulfil  a  conclusive  proof 
that  he  is  God,  and  the  inability  of  the  idols  to  do  either,  the 
one  or  the  other  an  equally  conclusive  proof  that  they  are 
things  of  naught^® — it  would  seem  to  be  self-evident  that, 

""This  is  the  contention  of  G.  A.  Smith  in  his  Commentary  on  Isaiah  in 
the  "  Expositor  "   series. 

**  Bredenkamp  speaks  of  this  argument  as  a  "seven-fold  repeated  syllog- 
ism "  in  view  of  its  frequent  occurrence. 


630  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

Other  things  being  equal,  the  religious  value  of  this  passage 
will  depend  on  the  degree  in  which  it  exhibited  this  glorious 
attribute.  To  argue  that  it  is  a  matter  of  no  consequence 
whether  these  words  were  uttered  by  Isaiah  a  hundred  years 
before  the  birth  of  Cyrus,  in  which  case  we  must  appreciate, 
as  he  is  said  by  Josephus  to  have  done,  the  **  unique  divinity  "^^ 
exhibited  by  them,  for  it  is  clear  that  no  uninspired  man  could 
perform  such  a  feat,  or  whether  they  were  spoken  by  an  un- 
known prophet  of  the  exilic  period,  who  was  acquainted  with 
Jeremiah's  prophecy  of  the  seventy  years,  perhaps  even  with  a 
m(Ore  definite  utterance  of  the  same  prophet  which  has  not 
been  preserved®^  and  who  saw  in  Cyrus  the  destined  deliverer 
— a  view,  which,  while  it  lays  more  or  less  emphasis  on  the  ful- 
filment of  former  prophecy,  reduces  the  distinctively  predictive 
element  in  this  passage  to  a  vanishing  minimum^® — is  equiva- 
lent to  saying  that  prophecy  per  se  has  no  religious  value. 
And  yet  the  Bible  teaches  us  to  see  in  miracle  and  prophecy  an 
indication  that  God  has  drawn  nigh  unto  man  and  that  the 
ground  '  whereon  he  stand  is  holy  ground  '.  Anyone  can 
predict  the  tempest  when  "  the  heavens  are  black  with  clouds 
and  wind  ".  But  only  the  prophet  of  God  can  foresee  its 
coming  when  the  heavens  are  as  brass  and  when  the  unin- 
spired servant  must  needs  go  and  scan  the  western  horizon 
seven  times  in  vain  before  he  discovers  even  "  the  little  cloud 
like  a  man's  hand  "  which  is  its  harbinger.  As  an  Isaianic 
utterance,  our  prophecy  possesses  a  "  unique  divinity  "  which 
shows  it  to  be  beyond  all  peradventure  the  very  Word  of 

"Josephus  tells  us  that  Cyrus  was  impressed  by  the  "unique  divinity" 
of  the  ancient  Isaianic  prophecy  and  consequently  resolved  to  fulfil  it. 

**  The  existence  of  such  a  prophecy  can,  however,  hardly  be  inferred  from 
Ezra  i.  i,  since  there  the  reference  seems  to  be,  as  in  Daniel  ix.  2,  to  the 
prophecy  of  seventy  years,  the  first  year  of  Cyrus  marking  the  end  of  the 
seventy  years. 

"At  the  time  to  which  this  utterance  is  assigned  (i.  e.,  shortly  before 
the  fall  of  Babylon)  it  would  have  required  no  prophetic  vision  to  foresee 
that  degenerate  Babylon  with  its  "monk-king",  Nabonidus,  would  fall 
an  easy  prey  to  the  warrior  of  the  North,  and,  while  the  captive  exiles 
could  not  have  been  sure  that  Cyrus  would  liberate  them,  they  must  cer- 
tainly have  hoped  it  and  might  have  guessed  it.  That  is,  the  predictive 
element  can  on  this  view  be  reduced  to  "  premonition  or  conjecture  ". 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  631 

God.  As  an  exilic  utterance,  it  is  so  markedly  less  unique  that 
it  might  be  regarded  as  but  a  "  man's  word  "  were  it  not  ex- 
pressly declared  to  be  the  word  of  Jehovah.  And  as  a  matter 
of  fact  many  who  assign  it  to  this  late  date  consider  it  merely 
a  man's  word.  Can  it  be  denied  then  that  the  significance  of 
this  utterance,  its  religious  value,  is  very  much  less  on  the 
one  view  than  on  the  other  ? 

This  does  not  in  itself  prove  in  any  sense  of  course  that 
this  prophecy  is  or  is  not  Isaianic.  To  argue  that  it  must  be 
Isaianic  for  no  other  reason  than  because  as  Isaianic  its  re- 
ligious value  would  be  greater  than  if  it  were  of  exilic  author- 
ship would  be  but  the  weakest  kind  of  an  argument,  if  indeed 
it  were  worthy  to  be  called  an  argument  at  all.  Our  conten- 
tion is  a  very  different  one.  We  argue  merely  that  the  re- 
ligious value  not  being  the  same,  it  is  an  important,  we  may 
say,  a  vital  question,  which  is  the  correct  view  and  by  no 
means  a  matter  of  indifference.  And  we  argue  further  that 
the  fact  that  the  unique  structure  of  the  poem  finds  an  ade- 
quate— in  our  opinion,  its  only  adequate — explanation  in  the 
acceptance  of  the  early  date  of  the  prophecy,  since  under 
these  circumstances  and  under  these  only  would  the  definite- 
ness  of  the  prophecy  be  of  sufficient  significance  to  account  for 
the  exceeding  care  with  which  as  we  have  seen  attention  is  di- 
rected to  it,  is,  in  view  of  the  difference  in  the  religious  values, 
a  very  remarkable  indication  that  the  prophecy  should  properly 
be  assigned  on  the  basis  of  "  internal  evidence  "  to  the  time  of 
Isaiah  and  even  to  the  great  ^'  evangelical  prophet "  himself. 
That  Isaiah,  had  he  written,  as  we  believe  that  he  did,  so 
unique  a  prophecy,  would  have  done  well  to  cast  it  in  such  a 
mould  as  would  indicate  and  emphasize  this  uniqueness,  that, 
could  he  have  foreseen  the  future  of  this  "  his  "  prophecy,  it 
would  not  have  been  to  him  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  it 
were  attributed  to  him  or  to  the  "  Great  Unknown  "  of  the 
exilic  period,  can  hardly  be  questioned.  Just  in  how  far  he  did 
realize  this  or  whether  he  realized  it  at  all  is,  of  course,  another 
question  and  one  which  we  cannot  answer  with  certainty.  To 
him,  living  as  he  did  so  long  before  the  events  took  place 
whose  coming  he  foresaw,  the  first  consideration  would  natur- 
ally be  "  to  search  out  what  or  what  manner  of  time  the  Spirit 


632  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

of  Christ,  which  was  in  him  did  signifty  to  be  the  time  of 
their  coming  ".  And  the  chronological  climax  of  the  poem 
would  be  intended  primarily  to  make  it  evident  to  his  con- 
temporaries and  to  all  who  lived  before  the  time  of  fulfilment, 
that,  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  time  of  the  utterance 
of  the  prophecy,  this  lay  in  a  far  distant  future,  and  to  teach 
the  lesson  of  patience  and  hope :  "  though  it  tarry,  wait  for 
it  ".  He  may  have  recognized  also  that  a  poetical  arrangement 
which  would  make  this  clear  to  his  contemporaries,  would,  or 
at  least  should,  establish  for  all  time  the  early  date  and  conse- 
quent uniqueness  of  the  prophecy.  Whet-her  he  did  or  did  not 
realize  this  we  cannot  say.  We  cannot  even  say  to  what  extent 
he  himself  understood  either  the  form  of  the  p>oem  or  the  pur- 
pose which  it  subserved,  despite  the  indications  of  design  which 
meet  us  at  every  point  in  its  construction.  For  no  one  will  deny 
that  the  prophets  ofttimes  failed  to  realize  the  full  meaning  of 
their  inspired  utterances,  that  they  builded  wiser  than  they 
knew.  If  both  thoughts  were  present  in  the  mind  of  Isaiah,  we 
would  see  a  double  reason  for  this  intricate  arrangement, 
which,  as  we  have  argued,  shows  everywhere  indication  of  de- 
sign. But  as  the  former  and, — as  we  try  to  think  ourselves 
into  the  inner  consciousness  of  the  prophet, — more  natural 
reason  gives  an  adequate  explanation  it  is  not  necessary  to  as- 
sume that  he  was  conscious  of  the  latter,  although  to  us,  who 
live  centuries  after  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy,  it  is  the  lat- 
ter naturally  which  is  of  especial  importance.  In  any  event  the 
form  of  the  poem  may  be  readily  accounted  for  if  it  is  Isaianic, 
for  it  is  then  the  singularly  appropriate  garb  of  a  very  re- 
markable prophecy.  But  as  an  exilic  production  we  fail  to  find 
any  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  remarkable  features  of  the 
poem. 

The  writer  is  fully  aware  that  in  arguing  for  the  Isaianic 
authorship  of  this  prophetic  poem  he  is  opposing  a  view  which, 
according  to  so  able  a  scholar  as  Dillmann,  "  could  long  ago 
be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  certain  conclusions  of  more 
recent  literary  criticism  ".  But  he  would  call  attention  to  the 
fact  that  he  has  rested  his  contention  almost  entirely  upon 
the  form  and  argument  of  the  poem,  upon  those  purely  liter- 
ary considerations,  which,  according  to  Prof.  Cheyne,  should 


THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH  633 

prevent  one  from  even  "  dreaming ''  of  assigning  it  to  Isaiah. 
Cheyne  tells  us:  "There  might  have  been  a  case  for  the 
Isaianic  origin  of  'Thus  saith  Yahwe  to  Cyrus'  (xlv.  i) 
if  the  passage  had  been  introduced  by  '  Behold  I  will  raise 
up  a  King,  Cyrus  by  name  '."  But  it  is  clear  that  the  Cyrus 
prophecy  of  xlv.  1-7  is  merely  the  continuation  of  the* 
poem  of  xliv.  24-28  and,  had  Prof.  Cheyne  recognized  the 
chronological  climax  of  this  poem  instead  of  trying  to  force 
it  into  a  uniform  Qina  measure,  he  might  have  seen  that  the 
whole  plan  of  the  poem  aims  to  say  just  this,  namely,  that 
Cyrus  and  the  Restoration  belong  to  a  distant  future. 

Concluding  Remarks 

It  remains  for  us  to  say  but  a  word  in  closing  with  re- 
gard to  the  bearing  of  our  investigation  upon  the  problem 
of  the  "  Book  of  Consolation  "  as  a  whole.  A  full  discussion 
of  this  question  would  add  too  materially  to  the  length  of  this 
already  lengthy  article  and  we  must  confine  ourselves  to  a 
couple  of  the  most  obvious  inferences.  It  has  just  been  pointed 
out  that  the  "  Poem  of  the  Transcendence  of  Jehovah  ",  al- 
though it  contains  a  Cyrus  prophecy,  is  in  a  sense  only  intro- 
ductory to  the  more  extended  Cyrus  prophecy  of  xlv.  1-13 
and  that  it  must  therefore  be  regarded  as  giving  to  the  latter 
its  true  historical  perspective  as  a  prophecy  relating  to  a  dis- 
tant future.  We  may  venture  a  step  further  and  assert  that 
the  admission  of  the  Isaianic  authorship  of  this  poem  leads 
to  the  admission  of  the  Isaianic  authorship  of  at  least  xl.- 
xlviii.,  i.  e.,  the  chapters  to  which  the  Deutero-Isaiah  is 
frequently  limited  in  the  more  recent  form  of  this  hypothesis, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  this  brief  poem  is  the  epitome,  or 
condensed  summary,  of  the  argument  of  these  chapters. ''^^  Its 
main  thoughts  are :  the  incomparable  greatness  of  Jehovah  as 
shown  in  creation,  providence  and  redemption;  the  utter  folly 
of  heathen  practices ;  and  the  certainty  of  release  and  restora- 
tion through  Cyrus.  And  these  are  central  thoughts  in  these 
chapters.     Cyrus  is  alluded  to  in  other  passages  of  the  group 

"Nagelsbach,  for  example,  declares  that  these  verses  only  repeat  the 
main  thoughts  of  chapters  xl.-xliv. 


634  THE  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JEHOVAH 

but  here,  where  he  is  called  by  name,  it  is  made  clear  that  he 
belongs  to  a  distant  future.  "^^  And  finally,  the  fact  that  the 
mention  of  Cyrus  by  name  has  long  been  regarded  as  the 
argument  par  excellence  for  the  non-Isaianic  authorship  of  the 
second  half  of  that  wonderful  book  which  has  been  for  so 
many  centuries  inseparably  connected  with  the  name  of  the 
great  contemporary  of  Hezekiah,  makes  it,  as  soon  as  its  early 
date  is  recognized,  an  argument  par  excellence  for  the  early 
date  of  the  very  book,  whose  late  date  it  was  supposed  to 
establish.  For  it  is  clear  that  if  this  prophecy  is  by  Isaiah 
there  is  no  other  in  the  whole  Book  of  Consolation  which 
could  not  have  been  uttered  by  his  lips. 

"  In  like  manner  the  placing  of  this  group  of  chapters  with  their  burden 
of  hope  in  such  close  connection  with  the  prophecy  of  judgment  in  chap- 
ter xxxix.  makes  it  clear  at  the  very  start  that  the  prophet  is  speaking 
prophetically  and  proleptically  of  a  time  in  the  future  when  the  woe  just 
uttered  shall  have  been  accomplished. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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